Although Sean Jackson was born in Louisiana, it was only a few years before his family left America and moved south to Argentina. He spent his entire childhood and adolescence overseas, eventually traveling from Argentina to the Central Asian nation of Azerbaijan. His grandmother taught him to play piano at a young age, but it was not until he was sixteen that he truly fell in love with music and decided to become a composer. In 2011, shortly after his family returned to the United States, he enrolled in the music program at Ouachita Baptist University.

Because he spent so many of his early years traveling around the world, Sean has never formed a strong attachment to any particular place. This detachment has led him to discover inspiration in a wide variety of sources. He has turned to both Greek and Chinese Mythology, composing Heracles at the River Styx for euphonium, and The Monkey King for flute. His string quartet Fahrenheit 451 is based on Ray Bradbury’s novel of the same name. He has also written Wandering City for trombone and electronics, based on a vague, imaginary city landscape.  As a graduate student at Stephen F. Austin State University, he has begun creating new instruments that explore the musical potential of water. Whether he writes for these instruments or for the more conventional ensembles of the classical tradition, he strives to give his music a unique but flexible voice, blending old and new ideas into a unified whole.