Sean Hickey knows just how much time and expense it can take for a composer to get his music out to new audiences. Hickey is a composer of new concert music and an arranger of music for pop and jazz musicians, but he's also an executive for Naxos of America, a position he worked his way into from jobs at other labels.

Like many American teenagers of the late 20th century, Hickey picked up an electric guitar as his first instrument, listening to rock and pop, but he was also exposed to Stravinsky and Shostakovich in high school. He took the guitar to college, studying jazz at Oakland University, then composition and theory at Wayne State. James Hartway, James Lentini, and Leslie Bassett were among his teachers in Michigan, but he also went on to study with Justin Dello Joio and Gloria Coates in New York.

Hickey has written many chamber music works, keyboard and choral music, and a few large-scale orchestral works. He has written specifically for such artists as violinists Ilya Gringolts and Julia Sakharova, clarinetist Alexander Fiterstein, pianist Xiayin Wang, and the Ars Futura ensemble. His concertos include ones written for clarinetist David Gould, cellist Dmitry Kouzov, and mandolinist Avi Avital. Max Lifchitz and Marin Alsop have premiered his orchestral works. Along the way Hickey has won many awards and grants for his compositions and been invited to numerous festivals. For the 2011 New York Chamber Music Festival, he prepared The Birds of Barclay Street as a memorial to September 11, 2001.

In 2005, Naxos released a recording of Hickey's chamber and orchestral music after label founder Klaus Heymann took a genuine interest in Hickey's music, not because he worked for the label. Delos also recorded his clarinet and cello concertos, released in 2013, and a few of his keyboard and chamber works on a 2014 release entitled Cursive.

In addition to his composing and his sales and marketing for Naxos, Hickey also lectures on new media and entrepreneurship for composers and musicians. ~ Patsy Morita, Rovi