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Steven Reineke is one of North America's leading conductors of popular music and is in his second decade as Music Director of The New York Pops at Carnegie Hall. Additionally, he is Principal Pops Conductor of the National Symphony Orchestra (NSO) at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and Principal Pops Conductor of the Houston and Toronto Symphony Orchestras.

Reineke is a frequent guest conductor and can be seen on the podium with the Chicago, Philadelphia, Dallas, and Detroit Symphony Orchestras.

On stage, Mr. Reineke creates and collaborates with a range of leading artists from the worlds of hip hop, R&B, Broadway, television, and rock including: Killer Mike, Maxwell, Common, Kendrick Lamar, Nas, Ne-Yo, Bob Weir, Trey Anastasio, Barry Manilow, Cynthia Erivo, Ben Rector, Cody Fry, Sutton Foster, Amos Lee, Dispatch, Jason Mraz, and Ben Folds, amongst others. In 2024, he led the NSO on PBS's  Next at the Kennedy Center  featuring Ben Folds’ DECLASSIFIED^® with Jacob Collier, Laufey, and dodie. He was previously seen with the NSO on PBS on  Great Performances  with hip hop legend Nas performing his seminal album Illmatic.

In 2017, he was featured on National Public Radio's All Things Considered, leading the National Symphony Orchestra—in a first for the show's history—performing live music excerpts in between news segments.

As the creator of hundreds of orchestral arrangements, Reineke’s work is performed worldwide and can be heard on numerous Cincinnati Pops Orchestra recordings. His symphonic works Celebration Fanfare, Legend of Sleepy Hollow, and Casey at the Bat are performed frequently in North America, including performances by the New York Philharmonic and Los Angeles Philharmonic. His Sun Valley Festival Fanfare was used to commemorate the Sun Valley Summer Symphony’s pavilion, and his Festival Te Deum and Swan’s Island Sojourn were debuted by the Cincinnati Symphony and Cincinnati Pops Orchestras. His numerous wind ensemble compositions are published by the C.L. Barnhouse Company and are performed by concert bands perennially.

A native of Ohio, Mr. Reineke is a graduate of Miami University of Ohio (2020 Alumnus Distinguished Achievement Medal), where he earned bachelor of music degrees with honors in both trumpet performance and music composition. He currently resides in New York City with his husband, Eric Gabbard.

John Debney is the ultimate film music character actor. In equal demand for family films such as Jingle Jangle, Come Away, and Elf as he is for adventure films like Iron Man 2, the Oscar^®-nominated composer also scored the powerful and poignant The Passion of the Christ. Debney is an agile jack-of-all-genres, sci-fi adventure (ORVILLE), composing for comedies (Bruce Almighty), horror (Dream House) and romance (Valentine’s Day) with the same confidence and panache. Debney is also known for his work in such films as Princess Diaries, Sin City, Liar Liar, Spy Kids, No Strings Attached, The Emperor’s New Groove, I Know What You Did Last Summer, and Hocus Pocus. Debney’s work also includes Disney’s The Jungle Book directed by Jon Favreau, Fox’s Ice Age: Collision Course directed by Mike Thurmeier, and Twentieth Century Fox’s award-winning musical The Greatest Showman starring Hugh Jackman and Zac Efron. Debney’s most recent films include The Beach Bum starring Matthew McConaughey and directed by Harmony Korine, the Warner Bros. comedy feature Isn’t It Romantic starring Rebel Wilson, Paramount Pictures’ family adventure feature Dora and the Lost City of Gold, and Bleecker Street’s biopic Brian Banks. Upcoming for Debney is Come Away directed by Brenda Chapman and starring Angelina Jolie.

Born in Glendale, California, Debney’s professional life began after he studied composition at the California Institute of the Arts, when he went to work writing music and orchestrating for Disney Studios and various television series. He won his first Emmy^® in 1990 for the main theme for The Young Riders, and his career soon hit a gallop. Since then, he has won three more Emmys^® (Sea Quest DSV), and been nominated for a total of six (most recently in 2012 for his work on the Kevin Costner western miniseries Hatfields & McCoys). His foray into videogame scoring—2007’s Lair—resulted in a BAFTA nomination and a Best Videogame Score award from The International Film Music Critics Association.

Debney has collaborated with acclaimed directors as diverse as Robert Rodriguez, Garry Marshall, Mel Gibson, the Farrelly Brothers, Jon Favreau, Jim Sheridan, Ivan Reitman, Peter Chelsom, Rob Cohen, Brian Robbins, Tom Shadyac, Sam Raimi, Adam Shankman, Howie Deutch, Renny Harlin, Peter Hyams, and Kenny Ortega. He was nominated by the Academy for his Passion of the Christ score. Inspired by that score, he then created The Passion Oratorio, performed in 2015 in the historic Mosque-Cathedral of Cordoba, Spain in front of 6,000 people during Holy Week. In 2005, Debney was the youngest recipient of ASCAP’s Henry Mancini Career Achievement Award.

“If I’m doing my job well,” says Debney, “I need to feel it. I really try to make sure that whatever I’m doing—even if it’s a comedy—that I’m feeling it and feeling either humor or the pathos or the dramatic impact of what I’m seeing. That’s the way I approach it.”

The 2024–2025 season is the National Symphony Orchestra’s 94th season and Music Director Gianandrea Noseda’s eighth season. Since its founding in 1931, the NSO has been committed to performances that enrich the lives of its audience and community members. In 1986, the National Symphony became an artistic affiliate of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, where it has performed since the Center opened in 1971. The NSO participates in events of national and international importance, including the annual nationally televised concerts on the lawn of the U.S. Capitol, live-streamed performances on medici.tv, and local radio broadcasts on WETA 90.9 FM.

Since launching its eponymous recording label in 2020, the NSO has embarked on ambitious recording projects including the Orchestra’s first complete Beethoven Symphony cycle and the release of the first-ever cycle of George Walker’s Sinfonias, both led by Noseda. Recent projects include a new series of Four Symphonic Works by Kennedy Center Composer-in-Residence Carlos Simon conducted by Noseda, and William Shatner’s So Fragile, So Blue, recorded live with the NSO in the Concert Hall.

The NSO’s community engagement and education projects are nationally recognized, including NSO In Your Neighborhood; Notes of Honor; and Sound Health. Career development opportunities for young musicians include the NSO Youth Fellowship Program and its acclaimed, tuition-free Summer Music Institute.