Biography
Understanding the considerable resources required to introduce original compositions to fresh listeners, Sean Hickey has balanced several roles within the music field. He creates contemporary concert works and adapts pieces for pop and jazz performers while also serving as a record label executive, a role reached after progressing through earlier positions at multiple companies.
Hickey, like countless American adolescents toward the end of the twentieth century, first took up the electric guitar amid his interest in rock and pop, though exposure to Stravinsky and Shostakovich arrived during high school. He continued with the guitar at college level, pursuing jazz studies at Oakland University before shifting to composition and theory at Wayne State. His Michigan instructors included James Hartway, James Lentini, and Leslie Bassett, while Justin Dello Joio and Gloria Coates later taught him in New York.
Hickey has produced numerous chamber, keyboard, and choral compositions along with several large-scale orchestral scores. Specific works have been created for violinists Ilya Gringolts and Julia Sakharova, clarinetist Alexander Fiterstein, pianist Xiayin Wang, and the Ars Futura ensemble. His concertos encompass those written for clarinetist David Gould, cellist Dmitry Kouzov, and mandolinist Avi Avital. Max Lifchitz and Marin Alsop have given premieres of his orchestral pieces. Throughout this period he has received numerous awards and grants for his compositions and participated in many festivals. For the 2011 New York Chamber Music Festival he prepared The Birds of Barclay Street in memory of September 11, 2001.
In 2005 Naxos issued a recording of Hickey’s chamber and orchestral music after label founder Klaus Heymann developed a genuine interest in the music itself rather than because of Hickey’s employment at the company. That album, Left at the Fork in the Road, reached the Billboard Top 100 Classical Chart. Delos later captured his clarinet and cello concertos for a 2013 release and selected keyboard and chamber works for the 2014 album Cursive. In 2025 Sono Luminus brought out the large piano cycle Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, performed by Vladimir Rumyantsev.
Beyond composition, Hickey directed sales and marketing at Naxos for several years before his appointment as managing director of the PentaTone label in 2022. He also delivers lectures on new media and entrepreneurship aimed at composers and musicians.
Hickey, like countless American adolescents toward the end of the twentieth century, first took up the electric guitar amid his interest in rock and pop, though exposure to Stravinsky and Shostakovich arrived during high school. He continued with the guitar at college level, pursuing jazz studies at Oakland University before shifting to composition and theory at Wayne State. His Michigan instructors included James Hartway, James Lentini, and Leslie Bassett, while Justin Dello Joio and Gloria Coates later taught him in New York.
Hickey has produced numerous chamber, keyboard, and choral compositions along with several large-scale orchestral scores. Specific works have been created for violinists Ilya Gringolts and Julia Sakharova, clarinetist Alexander Fiterstein, pianist Xiayin Wang, and the Ars Futura ensemble. His concertos encompass those written for clarinetist David Gould, cellist Dmitry Kouzov, and mandolinist Avi Avital. Max Lifchitz and Marin Alsop have given premieres of his orchestral pieces. Throughout this period he has received numerous awards and grants for his compositions and participated in many festivals. For the 2011 New York Chamber Music Festival he prepared The Birds of Barclay Street in memory of September 11, 2001.
In 2005 Naxos issued a recording of Hickey’s chamber and orchestral music after label founder Klaus Heymann developed a genuine interest in the music itself rather than because of Hickey’s employment at the company. That album, Left at the Fork in the Road, reached the Billboard Top 100 Classical Chart. Delos later captured his clarinet and cello concertos for a 2013 release and selected keyboard and chamber works for the 2014 album Cursive. In 2025 Sono Luminus brought out the large piano cycle Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, performed by Vladimir Rumyantsev.
Beyond composition, Hickey directed sales and marketing at Naxos for several years before his appointment as managing director of the PentaTone label in 2022. He also delivers lectures on new media and entrepreneurship aimed at composers and musicians.
Albums
Singles
