Los Angeles, CA (The Hollywood Times) 8/24/2026 – There are some interviews that feel like interviews, and then there are conversations that feel like you have simply stumbled into someone’s world for a little while.
Talking with Sean Jones was very much the latter.
The global award-winning entertainer, vocalist, songwriter and powerhouse performer has shared stages with some of the biggest names in music, including Beyoncé, Usher, Stevie Wonder and Natalie Cole, and has opened for entertainers including Ellen DeGeneres. But despite an impressive career that has taken him from a shy ninth-grade student to international stages, Jones speaks about his journey with an easy warmth and an almost infectious enthusiasm.
And, naturally, when you are talking to a singer, sometimes the best way to explain something is to simply sing it.
During the interview, Jones was asked about one of his own songs, “One in a Million,” from his album Waiting for Midnight. He described the song as one that “feels like a classic” to him, praising its lyrics, strings, and overall construction.
When asked to sing a line, he obliged.
“It’s like, ‘One in a million, baby,’” Jones sang.
It was only a few bars, but it was enough to make the interview suddenly feel like a private little concert.
Jones laughed easily and seemed completely at home discussing the thing that has shaped so much of his life: music.
Perhaps the most surprising part of Jones’ story is that becoming a professional musician was never actually the plan.
“I went to university to do law,” he explained. “That was my, literally, I didn’t even, I wasn’t even trying to be a singer in any sort of capacity.”
The turning point came in ninth grade during a French class.
Jones remembers sitting in the back of the classroom when another student, Anita Hines, heard him humming and told their teacher, Miss Priolo, that Sean could sing.
Miss Priolo called him to the front of the class.
“I don’t know why I did it,” Jones recalled. “My heart was beating out of my chest, and I had butterflies in my stomach, and I started singing.”
Then he noticed the reaction from the girls in the room.
“I was like, ‘Oh, this is it. This is okay,’” he said with a laugh.
That unexpected moment eventually led him to music and to In Essence, a five-man vocal group that Jones describes as Canada’s answer to New Edition.
“We were a boy band,” he said. “We sang, we danced, we did the whole thing.”
The group went on to find considerable success, including winning a Juno Award, the Canadian equivalent of a Grammy.
After 12 years, however, the group dissolved, leaving Jones to determine what would come next.
He began writing songs, pursued a publishing deal that never materialized, and later signed a solo record deal that also failed to unfold as planned.
Rather than giving up, Jones kept moving.
That persistence eventually led to one of the defining chapters of his career: Soul in the City at Toronto’s Casa Loma.
The concept was simple but ambitious: Jones performing original music and covers with a seven-piece band while bringing special guests onto the stage.
The first show in 2015 drew about 200 people.
It was supposed to be a four-show experiment.
Instead, it grew into an eight-year phenomenon, eventually attracting crowds of 750 to 1,000 people for a single show.
Jones remembers the experience as being filled with unforgettable moments and extraordinary guests, including Macy Gray and Eric Benét.
“There was some absolutely magical moments,” he said.
After a break, Soul in the City returned this year, with Jones describing the July performance as a beautiful homecoming.
“It was a packed house,” he said. “It was absolutely beautiful…The love was there.”
That sense of connection between performer and audience seems to be central to Jones’ philosophy.
Although soul and R&B are at the heart of his work, he isn’t interested in putting himself inside a musical box.
“We’ve done Country, we’ve done pop” he explained.
And when he performs a cover, Jones doesn’t want to simply imitate the original artist.
“I don’t like to do a cover the exact same way,” he said. “There’s no point, right? It’s like that magic has already been created.”
Instead, he wants to honor the original while adding something of himself.
“I’ll stay true to it as much as I can, but I do want to inject a little of me inside of that as well,” Jones said.
That philosophy is also at the heart of his upcoming Marvin Experience, a production centered entirely around the music of legendary soul artist Marvin Gaye.
Rather than attempting to impersonate Gaye or recreate his performances note-for-note, Jones wants to reinterpret the music while preserving its emotional core.
“You’ll never match that energy,” he said of trying to recreate what legendary artists have done. “Because that was magic that they created.”
For Jones, the answer is not imitation, but interpretation.
“I’m gonna sing them sort of my way, but still stay true to Marvin,” he explained. “Do him justice as best as I can.”
The Marvin Experience will incorporate visuals as well as Jones’ reimagined arrangements, creating what he describes as a more immersive experience.
Jones’ admiration for Marvin Gaye goes beyond the music itself. He is fascinated by the spontaneity he hears in Gaye’s recordings.
He described listening closely to Gaye and realizing that some passages sound as though the singer may have been creating lyrics and rhythms in the moment.
“There are almost times where you feel like he was just in the studio and making up the lyrics as he was singing it,” Jones said.
That kind of spontaneity is something Jones believes is increasingly rare.
“It’s not like today where they’re doing like a million different takes,” he said. “It was just like, that’s the take. That’s what you get.”
And, he believes, that is part of what made those recordings special.
“That’s what makes the magic,” Jones said. “That’s kind of a lot of what’s missing in some of the music today.”
That appreciation for authenticity has followed Jones throughout his own career.
As the first musical ambassador for WestJet, he created music for the airline’s boarding sessions and reimagined iconic Canadian songs in his own style. One particularly meaningful project involved Sarah McLachlan’s “Angel.”
Rather than attempting to duplicate the original, Jones transformed the song into something more hopeful.
“Her version is just really beautiful. It’s so sad,” he said. “My version is like, you can’t make that song happy, but it’s hopeful.”
He traveled to Vancouver and recorded the song using children from McLachlan’s music school as the choir.
The experience moved him deeply.
“Just their joy and the fact that we were able to do that for them, give them that experience…” he said. “My eyes were tearing up.”
Of all the projects on Jones’ calendar, one appears to hold a particularly special place in his heart: Holiday Soul.
The idea began years ago when Jones noticed that Christmas concerts were plentiful, but soulful holiday productions were difficult to find.
“I always saw Christmas shows going through Canada, and they were always the same people,” he said. “And it was never a soulful thing. So, I was like, ‘Why don’t I just create one?’”
In 2022, he did.
Now the concept is growing into the production he had always imagined.
On December 18, Jones will perform Holiday Soul with the Mississauga Symphony Orchestra at the Living Arts Centre in Mississauga, alongside Jackie Richardson and Divine Brown.
For Jones, the location makes the occasion even more meaningful.
He grew up in Mississauga, attended high school there and met many of the musicians who would eventually become members of his band.
“For me to be able to do this concert there, where my dream is fully just realized, is kind of poetic,” he said.
There is another important element to the production: giving back.
Jones has incorporated food-bank support into Holiday Soul from the beginning. During the 2022 performance, the audience donated three large bins of food along with monetary contributions.
This year, the production will support Food Bank Mississauga.
“I’m so happy to be able to do that for Mississauga,” Jones said.
Even with decades of performing behind him, Jones clearly isn’t interested in settling into one particular definition of himself.
He has more music on the way, including a more acoustic project that he describes as deeply personal.
“Some of these songs are very, very personal because it’s talking about my relationship with music, actually,” he said.
That may be the best way to understand Sean Jones as an artist.
He isn’t simply interested in singing songs.
He wants to understand them, reshape them, find the emotion inside them and then make them his own.
Whether he is reimagining Marvin Gaye, transforming a Sarah McLachlan classic, performing with a full orchestra, reinventing a country song or standing onstage with a seven-piece band, Jones seems to be chasing the same thing he heard in the music that inspired him in the first place.
The magic.
