Broadway musical Maybe Happy Ending earns 10 Tony Award nominations with music director John Yun, MMus'12
Photo credit Curt O’Neil
Congratulations to alumnus John Yun, music director of the new Broadway musical Maybe Happy Ending, which was nominated for 10 Tony Awards last week including Best Musical.
Master’s grad Yun is an innovative Broadway music director, pianist, and performer whose other recent projects include Hell’s Kitchen – The Alicia Keys Musical, Bob Fosse’s Dancin’ and Tina: the Tina Turner Musical.
Yun was recently featured in International Musician (cover story - May 2025), the official journal of the American Federation of Musicians of the United States and Canada. He recalls his time at Western as one of the most formative experiences of his career journey.
Article excerpt:
Enrolling at Ontario’s Western University for graduate school, Yun discovered that the school had a huge voice department. "Mainly out of survival, I accompanied a ton of singers to pay the bills," he says. "That's how I learned about the collaborative piano world. You spend 30 minutes in a voice lesson accompanying a singer, and another 30 minutes outside of their lesson learning their rep. I started working my way up the ladder and got more and more students."
Ultimately, Yun benefited from sitting in with incredible voice pedagogues for many hours a week. "It was hard not to absorb the incredible nuggets of wisdom they gave their students. I had practiced in a room long enough by myself, and I learned that collaborating with others was the best," he says.
Yun pinpoints a specific program at Western called Canadian Operatic Arts Academy (COAA) as being especially formative for him. "Singing and playing was a new muscle for me. Doing both together was tough."
In addition to opera scenes, the program tackled scenes from Stephen Sondheim's musicals. "I got assigned some music from Sondheim's Sunday in the Park with George, and it opened up a new world. I also learned how to read three lines at once and how to conduct, sometimes with only one hand. Sometimes, even with just my head," he laughs.
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Yun didn't know much about theater before enrolling in the COAA program, but he says he just kept following the breadcrumbs to new possibilities. "Suddenly, I began to see a path where theater work could keep me alive and working." While at Western, he says he also worked on keeping some jazz vocabulary at his fingertips. Though he didn't know it at the time, that decision would factor much later into landing his current gig.
Yun credits his many mentors along the way for giving him the push he needed. "We all need those people who give us opportunities that are maybe a bit beyond our abilities, but that help us grow," he says.
Read full article "The Winding Road to Musical Theater" (via International Musician, by Stephen Laifer, May 2025 edition)
Related links
This grad is on fire. John Yun on Alicia Keys' Broadway musical team - Western News (April 2024)
Young alumnus goes 'West' to find the world - Western News (August 2016)
