Sean Hickey

Sean Hickey is an American composer and record label executive, born in 1970 in Detroit, Michigan, and based in Brooklyn, New York for decades. In 2022, after two decades at Naxos, he was appointed managing director of Pentatone. Career From age 12 he took lessons in electric guitar. At Wayne State University, Hickey’s composition teachers included James Hartway and James Lentini. He has been commissioned by a number of musicians and organizations including the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, the Saint Petersburg Symphony, Michala Petri, Avi Avital, Lara Downes, the Fine Arts Quartet, Philippe Quint, Matthew Cochran and the Whatcom Symphony Orchestra. His first commercial recording, Left at the Fork in the Road, was released in November 2005 on Naxos American Classics. Featuring a selection of his chamber and orchestral works, the album broke the Billboard Top 100 Classical Chart and was praised as “substantive and savvy” by the magazine Gramophone. In May 2013, an album of Hickey’s clarinet and cello concertos was released on Delos. The album features cellist Dmitry Kouzov and clarinetist Alexander Fiterstein, along with the Saint Petersburg State Symphony Orchestra conduc