Devonté Hynes is well-known as a musical collaborator, songwriter and producer who’s worked with a diverse and ever-expanding group of artists (Solange, Mariah Carey, Harry Styles and Carly Rae Jepsen, to name a few) and a composer for film, television, dance and classical ensembles. Now, Billboard can exclusively reveal that the artist also known as Blood Orange will soon add another creative milestone to his resumé: his Broadway composing debut.
Hynes will compose original music for the play JOB, which begins performances at the Hayes Theatre on July 15 in advance of an official July 30 opening. JOB arrives following an acclaimed, hit off-Broadway run that began in fall 2023 at SoHo Playhouse and transferred to the Connelly Theatre for a second, standing-room-only run.
Sydney Lemmon and Peter Friedman star in JOB.
“Anyone familiar with Dev’s work already knows what a naturally brilliant storyteller he is,” producer Hannah Getts said in a statement, “so it’s no surprise that his work on JOB not only enriches the thematic and narrative threads but also deepens the emotional resonance of the play.”
A psychological thriller written by Max Wolf Friedlich and directed by Michael Herwitz, JOB centers on an employee of a big tech company (played by Sydney Lemmon) who’s placed on leave after she becomes the subject of a viral video and, determined to regain the job that gives her life meaning, seeks the help of a crisis therapist (played by Peter Friedman).
Hynes is friendly with Lemmon, who relayed to JOB‘s producers that he’d seen and loved the show during its Connelly run; when it became clear that the show would transfer to Broadway, the producers along with playwright Wolf Friedlich — who’d always wanted to incorporate outside artists into the show’s creative team — approached Hynes about composing music for it.
A 2021 Grammy nominee in the best chamber music or small ensemble performance category for his work with Third Coast Percussion on their album Fields, Hynes has released four solo albums as Blood Orange. His scoring work includes the films Queen and Slim, Passing and Master Gardener, as well as the HBO series We Are Who We Are. A multi-instrumentalist, Hynes was one of just four pianists invited to play alongside composer Philip Glass at the Kennedy Center in 2018, and his own debut concerto for piano and strings premiered at New York’s Little Island Festival in 2021; he’s also collaborated with various major symphony orchestras.
