ORCHESTRATOR TERENCE ODONKOR’S rapid rise in the theater industry doesn’t surprise music professor Kathleen Mitchell at all. Odonkor, she says, was as an ever-smiling student. A talented musician who anchored TCNJ’s transcendent saxophone quartet. An unflappable student manager overseeing the sound boards at Mayo Concert Hall. A self-taught arranger juggling compositions for every corner of the music department, from the clarinet and wind ensembles to the Trentones and TCNJ Rocks On!

But for Mitchell, one memory in particular stands out. It was the day she encountered Odonkor in the department hallway, a small speaker clipped to his backpack blasting a song — maybe Motown, most certainly jubilant — in his wake.

“I was like, ‘Dude, what are you doing?’” she says.

Odonkor’s answer, “I’m listening,” was as earnest as it was obvious.

“From the very beginning, as far as I can remember, he was always doing something to be in the middle of music,” Mitchell says. “He was so passionate, and people like that just want to get better all the time. They never want to stop learning.”

EVER SINCE ODONKOR discovered the saxophone the summer before sixth grade, his world has revolved around notes and melodies and the kaleidoscope of emotions that the right combinations can spark. His pursuit of a career in music began with an eight-bar middle school sax solo and eventually landed him at the center of TCNJ’s music community, where he was everywhere all at once, practicing, performing, and always — always — listening.

Now, four years after graduating with a BA in music, Odonkor boasts a resume featuring collaborations with some of the biggest names on Broadway, including Josh Groban, Idina Menzel, and composer and lyricist Andrew Lippa. He orchestrated and arranged the music for a benefit concert honoring Lin-Manuel Miranda and was part of the music team for Here We Are, Stephen Sondheim’s last musical. And he’s currently juggling a dozen projects that reflect his wide-ranging talents: supervising and arranging the music for Starting Up, a new musical comedy aiming to open Off-Broadway next year; working with artists ranging from comedian Alex Edelman to Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Michael R. Jackson; and serving as anexecutive music producer for a still-top-secret television show.

Odonkor is 27 years old and just getting started.

“Music brings me so much joy,” he says. “I want to make things that make people feel as excited as I do. I want to be the Quincy Jones of this generation. Or, more accurately, I want to be the Terence Odonkor of any generation.”

BORN IN GHANA, Odonkor immigrated to Atlanta with his family when he was a year old. It was there that he would eventually become captivated by a unique musical genre: television theme shows.

From his perch on the couch, and later sitting at the family desktop searching for lyrics on YouTube, Odonkor spent hours giddily belting out songs from hundreds of shows, from Cheers and Blossom to his beloved Power Rangers.

“To this day, I know every word and every melody to every season,” he says, adding, “I was just obsessed with any kind of music that was related to storytelling.”

After his family moved to St. Louis, a music requirement led Odonkor to the middle school band’s open house. At first — inspired, naturally, by SpongeBob’s Squidward — he considered the clarinet. But his father deemed the choice “uncool,” and so he chose the saxophone. Soon, he couldn’t imagine his life without it.

“I took to it incredibly fast,” he says. “The time I spent playing outside with my friends immediately got cut in half, not because my dad or teacher forced me to practice. I just truly wanted to sit in our basement and play the saxophone all day.”

Odonkor surged ahead of his peers, speeding through his music work- books and ordering off-beat sheet music, including the theme from Family Guy, to play in his downtime. In seventh grade, when he was chosen to perform a concert solo from “High Maintenance” by Gordon Goodwin’s Big Phat Band, he rehearsed the short piece over and over again.

“There’s no musical phrase that is more ingrained in my mind than that,” he says. “I think my determination to get it right unlocked something in me. That moment made me realize I was genuinely good, and genuinely driven to be good at it. I felt like a musician.”

In St. Louis, and later during high school in Lawrenceville, New Jersey, he embraced every musical extra- curricular available, including marching band, orchestra, jazz band, and choir. As if that weren’t enough, he was also a member of the varsity tennis, soccer, and track teams. When he arrived at TCNJ in 2018, Odonkor was ready for a dive into his studies.

A few months into his freshman year, Odonkor joined the Trentones, TCNJ’s competitive a cappella group. He had already started to teach himself how to arrange music, adapting existing pieces to fit new voices and instruments. Being part ofthe Trentones gave him the perfect opportunity to test out his new passion in real time.

His first taste of success came when he arranged Ariana Grande’s “thank u, next” to fit the group’s vocals. “I remember being so proud of my arrangement,” he says. “It sounded like an a cappella song. It sounded like it was supposed to.”

Word of Odonkor’s talent quickly spread. One professor tapped him to arrange for the clarinet ensemble. Another asked him to help with the choir. As music director for the Trentones, he arranged the majority of their vocals, along with pieces for other campus a cappella groups and for his own saxophone quartet.

Odonkor took the work seriously and studied the discographies of every musician whose work might inform his own, from Boyz II Men and Stevie Wonder to gospel great Mahalia Jackson; he spent every free moment listening. “To be a good artist, I needed to know music,” he says. “And music brings me happiness. Who knows what joy I’m leaving out of my life by not taking the initiative to search for it.”

ODONKOR’S SELF-DRIVEN streak served him well when the pandemic hit midway through his sophomore year. 

Sensing that TCNJ — and the world — might be closed for longer than a few weeks, Odonkor packed his room, moved home, and cooked up a do-it-himself lesson plan to maintain his momentum. He built a desk, bought a synthesizer, and scoured Facebook Marketplace for “every instrument under the sun,” adding a trombone, trumpets, guitars, and congas to his makeshift studio.

“I was locked in,” he says. “I spent my time learning skills that could only really have come to me as a result of the specific circumstances of being in my basement all day, every day, during the pandemic.”

During that time, Odonkor sought out musicians willing to share their talents. While scrolling Instagram, he discovered jazz pianist Mark G. Meadows and asked to pick his brain.

The request was unusual, says Meadows, but Odonkor’s “contagious, joyful energy” came through when they hopped on a Zoom.

“It was an instant ‘I’m going to try to do what I can to help this guy out,’” says Meadows, who now holds the title of music director for Wicked actress Cynthia Erivo.

Meadows quickly offered Odonkor some work running his social media account.

“I said yes, but I’d never done anything like that,” Odonkor says. “I immediately started learning how to edit videos.”

Soon Meadows tasked him with transcribing and proofreading scores.

“The questions he was asking, about jazz and harmony, made me know I was in good shape,” Meadows says. “He’s detail-oriented and wants everything to be right and cares so much.”

When Meadows heard that ArtsCentric, a small theater in Baltimore, needed an orchestrator, he recommended Odonkor. The opportunity to help with Technicolor, an original production about the history of black artists in television and film, was life-changing.

“I’d never orchestrated a show, but I knew I wanted to do that kind of work,” Odonkor says. “So, I just threw myself into it.”

There was little sleep and lots of stress, but through it all, Odonkor remained an enthusiast always ready to take on new challenges. “If I say I’m going to do something, I will do whatever it takes to get it done,” he says.

By his senior year, Odonkor’s career was taking shape. Accepted into a prestigious mentorship program with Musicians United for Social Equity, he was matched with Tony Award-winner Stephen Oremus. The experience helped him land his first Broadway gig as music assistant on the national tour of Pretty Woman: The Musical. Each morning, he rode the train from Princeton Junction into the city and was (mostly) back for afternoon classes.

In his final TCNJ semester that spring, Odonkor served as the music assistant for Broadway’s A Strange Loop. Within a few weeks of his graduation, the show won a Tony Award, presented at a ceremony where Odonkor helped composer Alex Lacamoire of Hamilton fame orchestrate the opening number.

“And then it just kind of spiraled from there,” he says.

THESE DAYS, Odonkor is the busiest he’s ever been. “I’m definitely not sleeping as much as I should,” he says. He’s especially excited about his work as co-vocal arranger on Harveyland. The new musical, currently in development, comes from composer and lyricist Andrew Lippa, whose shows include The Addams Family, The Wild Party, and Big Fish.

“He’s fearless,” Lippa says of Odonkor. “That heart of his, along with his deep talent and growing skillset, is really what has endeared him to me.”

Lippa met Odonkor through the mentorship program in 2022, hiring him to orchestrate his musical Love Somebody Now. Though it was one of Odonkor’s earliest efforts, Lippa was impressed. “The challenge with mostyoung people is holding them to thesame standard I would hold any other colleague of experience,” he says.

But Odonkor not only put forth fresh ideas, he also understood how to accept criticism. Says Lippa: “It’s the sign of a truly terrific mind that he works to better himself.”

Even as Odonkor’s schedule grows ever more packed, he still maintains a “to listen to” list that lately features new indie artists and old musical theater cast albums.

While his early successes have been a thrill, Odonkor says the ripple-out effects of his work matter more.

“I want to be successful at a high level,” says Odonkor, “But that is a byproduct of the goal. And the goal is chasing joy.”

Photos Peter Murphy