John Yun goes from the Sault to Broadway and the Tonight Show

John Yun says he couldn’t have imagined taking his love of music to Broadway and the Tonight Show when he started taking lessons at the Algoma Conservatory of Music at the age of five.

Currently, Yun is working as the full-time associate conductor for the Tony award-winning Broadway musical Tina: The Tina Turner Story, which reopened to theatre goers last month.

Yun said the show had been running for only a few months when the pandemic hit in March 2020, causing it to be closed down with the rest of Broadway during much of the pandemic. He took on the job this summer when productions were beginning to plan for a fall reopening.

“My regular job is to be there for eight shows a week for whatever they need me to do,” said Yun by phone from New York City. “Whatever the show needs. We are trying to stay up and running and, like every other show, are trying to survive as best we can.”

One of those things he was asked to do was to take his conductor’s baton to do a number from the show on the Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon.

“It was kind of him to kick start the opening, because the entire Broadway community had been shut down for a year and a half,” said Yun of Fallon booking Broadway shows.

Yun said friends and family back home in the Sault and beyond were happy to be able to catch him on late-night television.

“For me, booking the Broadway gig is so much harder but everybody seems to be excited about the Tonight Show,” said Yun. 

“My piano was right next to The Roots, who I have been a fan of for 10 or 15 years,” said Yun. “I was still very excited to do it, but I really just wanted to turn around and chat with some other really great musicians, ones I have been following for a very long time.”

Musical theatre was not on the radar for Yun during much of his schooling, which began at the conservatory before he moved on to study at Algoma University and Laurentian University.

It wasn’t until he moved on to grad school at Western University to do a masters in piano performance that the world of musical theatre opened up to him.

“At the time it was more about taking work that would help to pay the bills and from then on I kept meeting more people with more opportunities and eventually between 2011 to 2014 they started snowballing to bigger and bigger jobs,” said Yun.

He started working on touring shows around the world, including West Side Story in Europe, Asia and the Middle East and two national tours in the U.S. for the show Annie.

Yun had finished another tour before the pandemic shut down the limelights for almost two years.

”I was fortunate in that I had just finished a really great tour of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, so that allowed me to stay afloat for a year or so,” he said.

He came back to the Sault for a few months during the pandemic to see friends and family and play a little shinny. Yun said it took about a week to get readjusted to being in Sault Ste. Marie after living in the hustle and bustle of New York City.

“There is something nice about coming back to the community and recognizing the faces at the grocery store,’ said Yun. “When you are from a community of that size, especially if you were involved in athletics and music like I was, you always know people. Even now, when I come back and go to Good Life or Tim Hortons I am bound to run into somebody I played hockey with 20 years ago.”

Now working on Broadway, Yun said everybody is working together to ensure the curtains stay open, audience included.

“Here in New York City there is a pretty strong mask mandate for theatre goers. At the end of the show I can see the audience and there is a solid 99 per cent of patrons that are following it and keeping it on during the show,” said Yun. ”It seems like there is an agreement and understanding that if this is what w need to do to get performing arts back, even if you’re not comfortable with it, it’s a small price to pay to be able to see live performances again.”