Wayne Sanders, co-founder and music director emeritus of the famed Opera Ebony since its inception, is a coach, conductor and pianist. Sanders has collaborated and performed with Kathleen Battle, Jessye Norman, Florence Quivar, Kearstin Brown, Donnie Ray Albert, Gregory Sheppard, George Shirley, Benjamin Matthews, and the late William Warfield.  He has been consultant to the Houston Grand Opera, Finland’s Savonlinna Opera Festival, and Munich’s Münchener Biennale; provided musical direction for presentations ranging from an all-star tribute to Marian Anderson at Aaron Davis Hall in New York, NY to Porgy and Bess in Helsinki and Savonlinna, Moscow, and Tallinn.

Co-founder of Opera Ebony, the longest continuously operating Black opera company in the world, a significant achievement in American opera history, based in New York, Sanders has participated in touring performances of Opera Ebony’s acclaimed Black Heritage concert series and served as its conductor over the course of its international run in Canada, Iceland, and Switzerland. He has been responsible for the musical preparation of numerous premieres, including Dorothy Rudd Moore’s Frederick Douglass, Perfect Harmony by Heikki Sarmanto, Harriet Tubman by Leo Edwards, and most recently, Anthony Knight’s No Cowards in Our Band. Sanders has been music consultant to Syracuse Opera and Hudson Hall and is a former member of the music faculty of Sarah Lawrence College. In 2025 he was inducted into the Opera America Hall of Fame. A native of Chicago, he holds degrees in piano performance from Roosevelt University.