John Yun: The Winding Road to Musical Theater

May 1, 2025

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Growing up as the only child of Korean parentage in his small Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, community, John Yun, music director of the surprise Broadway hit Maybe Happy Ending in New York’s Belasco Theatre, says he didn’t really see the piano as his future. “I wasn’t a great student,” Yun remembers. “I kind of did the bare minimum. As a Canadian, I had much more interest in hockey and I also loved playing soccer. Focusing on piano just wasn’t really on my radar, to be honest.”

Yun, of Local 802 (New York City), admits he wasn’t serious about playing. “Piano was in the middle of the priorities list, somewhere after mowing the lawn. But I had great teachers who knew how to make the most of the few minutes I was giving them out of every week,” he says.

It wasn’t until he was in his early 20s that Yun says he began to make the piano a priority. “And then I suddenly understood that I needed to work hard if I wanted to get up to everyone else’s level. In the end, I guess you could say my career has been a slow evolution.”

Tackling Musicals

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.

Another factor in Yun’s early years resurfaced to help him in the program. In his teens, Yun discovered a love of DJing. “We’re talking old school, with turntables, pitch altering, etcetera,” he says. “I was doing well with it, and for a while I thought I might be a DJ for a living. That didn’t pan out, obviously, but it gave me a sensitivity to tempo, and that really came in handy as a conductor.”

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. His theater experience snowballed up to his first national show in 2013, Godspell. “It’s a similar path for many of us. The gigs get a bit bigger and hopefully start to pay a bit more.”

From the Top

For Yun, bigger gigs meant bigger shows. The international tour of West Side Story was the first time he ever conducted a large orchestra, in addition to playing keyboards. “It was also the first time I conducted from memory. The music director told me that if I memorized the score, I’d know it better and be able to communicate it better,” he explains. “I was at just the right age of stupidity and confidence to try it. But also, I had a big orchestra of professionals, and I knew they would help me if I got in over my head.”

After the pandemic, Yun was asked to put his name in the hat for Tina: The Tina Turner Musical. “When I got the inquiry, I was up in the Adirondacks without internet. I could only see the subject line of the e-mail, ‘Tina Turner Broadway.’ When I finally got an internet connection, I saw they were asking me to submit tapes to conduct the show—but I was in the middle of nowhere,” says Yun. He called around to churches in the area and asked to use a piano. “I learned the excerpts, sent it off, and heard back in a few weeks that I got the gig.” Tina marked Yun’s official entry into the Broadway scene in New York City.

Yun stayed with Tina from September 2021 to August of the following year. Afterward, he says, he had enough connections to be offered music director positions for national tours. He didn’t want to jump back into that, however, having done much touring prior to the pandemic with shows that included Godspell, West Side Story, and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. He decided to stick around New York.

On Being Well-Versed

Being a music director, Yun explains, requires a particular skill set. “In New York, music directing is vast in scope. You can be leading a show, or just a trio with a singer. But you always take something away from it. Playing with club date bands, I’ve learned how to transpose quickly and make changes in real time.” That fast adaptability, he says, is very much a required skill when conducting a show.

On Broadway, the job of music director is multi-faceted. “Some days you’re part conductor and part therapist, working to get what you need around what each singer needs to do their best work. I’ve learned how to navigate someone’s psyche to get results without chipping away at their confidence,” he says. “Other days you’re a translator, an intermediary between the director and tech personnel.”

For long-running shows, the job is different still. “Beyond building the orchestra, it’s about leadership and keeping up morale, thinking of ways to keep things fun, while also keeping the show at a high level,” he says, adding that trust is a huge component. “I’ve seen shows where the music director micromanages too much. From day one, I acknowledge that I will never know as much as the musicians know about their instruments.”

Yun says every music director has their own wheelhouse. “Some are great stick conductors, for example, but not as strong on the keyboard. My strength is that I’m comfortable wearing many different hats, and I have enough musical vocabulary that I won’t be totally out of place in most genres.

“Truthfully, I’m a solid B at most of the things I do, but I’m well rounded,” he laughs. “It took me a long time to get comfortable with that. It was only after I got to New York that I discovered these were strengths, and there was a place for someone like me, who could do everything convincingly.”

Yun’s stint with Tina was the first time he experienced true diversity in the orchestra across the gamut of age, gender, and color. “We had folks in their 30s, alongside seasoned pros who have been on the scene for decades,” he says. “Our orchestra was half women. It was all new for me, and it was the first time I understood how the sum of our parts can be extraordinary, if we do it correctly.”

A Sense of Belonging

The call that led to his current show, Maybe Happy Ending, came out of the blue three years ago. “I was working on Tina and the music supervisor of Maybe Happy Ending, Deborah Abramson (member of Local 802), asked if I would be interested in joining them for their upcoming industry reading. Deborah had found a clip that I had made during the pandemic, playing some Bill Evans. There’s a strong jazz component to the show, and she thought I would be a great fit for it,” he says.

Maybe Happy Ending follows the futuristic imaginary lives of “helper robots” in a version of Seoul, South Korea, sometime in the late 21st century. The lyrics were written by South Korean writer Hue Park in 2016. The tie-ins with Yun’s own Korean heritage may be fortuitous, but he nevertheless feels a deep personal connection with the production.

“It has been important for me to be a part of something with a strong history in South Korea,” he says. “Attending my first rehearsal of Maybe Happy Ending and seeing so many faces similar to mine was an emotional experience. Everyone involved knew it was an amazing moment to have so many Koreans in the same room.”

Yun adds that it’s not lost on anyone working on the show. “We all feel very lucky for the opportunity.” Also not lost on Yun is the knowledge that he is a role model for other aspiring members of the Asian theater community. “Growing up, all I ever wanted was to feel a sense of belonging, of fitting into a community,” he says of his childhood. “My social currency back then was through athletics. There weren’t any other people who looked like me, so my way of connecting was being good at hockey or basketball. That’s also why I didn’t focus on music so much in my early years.”

Raising the Profile

Yun believes being involved in high-profile shows can do a lot to help the Asian community gain more visibility in the theater world. For Yun, that visibility was literal. “At the end of Tina, the band is revealed onstage, on a platform. That reveal allows the audience to see the band’s diversity.”

With Maybe Happy Ending, Yun says that diversity is even more impactful, specifically for the South Korean community. “Suddenly, here is this show where people like me are not just represented and visible—we’re at the center of the story. It’s meaningful to know that Asian audience members seeing the show will see people who look like themselves.”

Yun first joined the AFM in 2013, becoming a member of Local 279 (London, ON) just before his first tour with Godspell. “They were incredibly helpful with navigating immigration issues when I started working in the States,” he recalls. “I was able to walk into the office and get fast face-to-face help.”

“Now, being a member of Local 802, I enjoy the sense of protection here over Broadway-related matters,” he says. “There is a serious need for an office looking after our affairs in the theater. I feel a sense of safety doing gigs in this city. When I filed my very first contract several years ago, there was someone in the 802 office to walk me through the process.” Yun says he doesn’t understand why any musician would not want the protection of the Federation on their side. “Having the backing of the AFM is a little like engaging a law firm. If someone tries to take advantage of you, you’ve got the union in your corner.”

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