about.

Ethan Popp is a Grammy Award–nominated music producer and a three-time Tony Award– and Olivier Award–nominated orchestrator, music supervisor, and arranger whose work spans Broadway and the West End, film, television, recordings, and emerging media. For more than twenty-five years, he has helped create bold, cinematic musical worlds by bringing together theatrical craft, contemporary production techniques, and evolving technology.

At the center of Popp’s work is an expanded approach to orchestration—one that considers not simply the assignment of notes to instruments, but the architecture of an audience’s entire musical experience. Working across live orchestration, contemporary production techniques, and immersive audio in close collaboration with sound design, he creates a unified musical language that considers not only what an audience hears, but how music moves through space and supports the storytelling around it.

His orchestrations for The Lost Boys, Tina: The Tina Turner Musical and Motown The Musical have each received Tony Award nominations, while his work on Back to the Future: The Musical received an Olivier Award nomination. Additional theater credits include Mrs. Doubtfire, School of Rock, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, Rock of Ages, We Will Rock You, Mamma Mia! and productions of Disney’s Tarzan, Aida and The Lion King.

For film, Popp served as Music Director and Music Production Supervisor for 20th Century Studios’ The Greatest Showman, helping lead the music team behind Benj Pasek and Justin Paul’s score and the film’s record-breaking soundtrack. He also served as vocal and piano coach to Rami Malek for his Academy Award–winning performance as Freddie Mercury in Bohemian Rhapsody.

His television work includes NBC’s Smash and HBO’s Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, along with appearances and performances across major broadcast networks.

Throughout his career, Popp has collaborated with an extraordinary range of artists and creators, including Queen, Phil Collins, Tina Turner, Stevie Wonder, Elton John, Stevie Nicks, Bono, Alice Cooper, Smokey Robinson, Glen Ballard, Alan Silvestri, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Berry Gordy, Huey Lewis and many others.

Across stage and screen, Popp works with directors, producers, composers, artists, musicians, and sound teams from the earliest stages of development through final delivery—helping shape the musical architecture of large-scale, music-driven storytelling.