John Morris Russell’s embrace of America’s unique voice and musical stories has transformed how orchestral performances connect and engage with audiences. As Conductor of the world-renowned Cincinnati Pops Orchestra since 2011, his wide- ranging and diverse work as a musical leader, collaborator and educator continues to reinvigorate the musical scene throughout Cincinnati and across the continent. As music director of the Hilton Head Symphony Orchestra in South Carolina, Russell conducts the classical series as well as the prestigious Hilton Head International Piano Competition.   

A Grammy-nominated artist, JMR has worked with leading performers from across a variety of musical genres, including Aretha Franklin, Emanuel Ax, Amy Grant and Vince Gill, Garrick Ohlsson, Rhiannon Giddens, Hilary Hahn, Brian Stokes Mitchell, Cynthia Erivo, Sutton Foster, George Takei, Steve Martin, Brian Wilson, Leslie Odom, Jr., Lea Salonga, Mandy Gonzalez, Rick Steves and Bob Weir.

A popular guest conductor, Russell has worked with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Cleveland Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, the Boston Pops and the National Symphony of Washington, D.C. He frequently conducts Canadian orchestras including those of Toronto, Calgary and Vancouver, and he has led the orchestras of St. Louis, Milwaukee, Pittsburgh, Detroit, Houston, Indianapolis and Dallas, and the Minnesota Orchestra, Utah Symphony, Oregon Symphony, Colorado Symphony and New Jersey Symphony. His work in opera and musical theater includes Cincinnati Opera, where he conducted its first production of Hans Krasá's Brundibár and the world premiere of Scott Davenport Richards’ Blind Injustice, which was released on CD in 2021. He has also worked with Wolf Trap Opera and New York City Ballet and led semi-staged productions of The Music Man and Ragtime with the Cincinnati Pops. 

Since 2014, Russell has regularly led the National Orchestral Institute and Festival in College Park, Md., one of the nation’s premier training orchestras. In 2024, JMR and the NOI collaborated with Wolf Trap Opera on a production of Kurt Weill’s The Seven Deadly Sins, a program he also presented with the Hilton Head Symphony in 2025. Dedicated to sharing the American musical experience with the newest generation, he helped develop and conducted the LinkUP! educational concert series at Carnegie Hall between 1997 and 2009, a continuation of the program launched by Walter Damrosch in 1891 and later led by Leonard Bernstein, and he has piloted educational programs with the symphony orchestras of Cincinnati, Windsor and Hilton Head. 

For over two decades, Russell has led the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra’s wildly successful Classical Roots program, which honors and celebrates Black musical excellence and has garnered record-breaking in-person and online audiences. Featured artists have included Marvin Winans, Alton White, George Shirley, Common, Donald Lawrence and Hi-Tek, as well the 150-voice Classical Roots Community Chorus, members of the Nouveau Program, and hundreds of regional actors, dancers, artists, singers and musicians.

Russell has contributed seven albums to the Cincinnati Pops Orchestra discography, including 2023’s holiday album JOY! In 2015, he created the “American Originals Project,” which has won both critical and popular acclaim, and two landmark recordings: American Originals (the music of Stephen Foster) and the Grammy-nominated American Originals 1918 (a tribute to the dawn of the jazz age). Other American Originals concerts have included King Records and the Cincinnati Sound with Late Show pianist Paul Shaffer in 2020, which honors legendary recording artists associated with the Queen City, and Harlem Renaissance with renowned jazz pianist Marcus Roberts, to be released as a live recording in spring of 2026. In 2025, JMR served as co-producer and conductor of American Public Television’s Rick Steves’ Europe: A Symphonic Journey, which was carried on more than 300 PBS stations from coast to coast. During the Pops 2025–26 season, JMR performs Peter Boyer’s newest work American Mosaic with celebrated actor Martin Sheen. Russell’s American Soundscapes video series with the Pops and Cincinnati’s CET Public Television has surpassed one million views on YouTube since its launch in 2016. 

John Morris Russell served as music director of the Windsor Symphony Orchestra between 2001 and 2012, conducting over 40 world premieres and recording the Juno Award-nominated album of Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf. During his time with the WSO, he was a two-time recipient of Ontario’s Lieutenant Governor’s Award for the Arts. In 2011, the University of Windsor awarded him an honorary doctorate and, the following year, he was named the WSO’s first Conductor Laureate. JMR recently concluded his nine-year tenure as Principal Pops Conductor of the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, following in the footsteps of Doc Severinsen and Marvin Hamlisch. 

John Morris Russell earned degrees from the University of Southern California — Los Angeles and Williams College in Massachusetts, and he has studied at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London, the Cleveland Institute of Music, the Aspen Music Festival in Colorado and the Pierre Monteux School for Conductors in Hancock, Maine.