John Morris Russell, Cincinnati Pops Conductor, Louise Dieterle Nippert & Louis Nippert Chair

John Morris Russell’s embrace of America’s unique voice and musical stories has transformed how orchestral performances can connect and engage with audiences everywhere. The wide range and diversity of his work with the Cincinnati Pops Orchestra as a conductor, collaborator and educator invigorates the musical scene in Cincinnati and beyond. Russell is Music Director of the Hilton Head Symphony Orchestra and the Hilton Head International Piano Competition, and he serves as Principal Pops Conductor of the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, following in the footsteps of Marvin Hamlisch and Doc Severinsen. He served as Music Director of Ontario’s Windsor Symphony Orchestra from 2001 to 2012.

A popular guest conductor, Russell has worked with the leading North American orchestras, including the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Cleveland Orchestra, Chicago Symphony, Toronto Symphony and New York Philharmonic, the Boston Pops and the National Symphony. 

For more than a decade, Russell has regularly led the National Orchestral Institute and Festival in College Park, Maryland, one of the nation’s premier training orchestras. Dedicated to sharing the American musical experience with the newest generation of players, he helped develop and conducted the LinkUP! educational concert series at Carnegie Hall and has piloted educational programs with the symphony orchestras of Cincinnati, Windsor and Hilton Head.

For over two decades, he has led the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra’s wildly successful Classical Roots initiative honoring and celebrating Black musical excellence, which has garnered record-breaking in-person and online audiences.

Russell’s seven recordings with the Cincinnati Pops Orchestra include 2023’s holiday album JOY! and the landmark recordings in the “American Originals Project”: American Originals (the music of Stephen Foster) and the Grammy-nominated American Originals 1918 (a tribute to the dawn of the jazz age).

John Morris Russell earned degrees from the University of Southern California and Williams College and 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.

Photo Credit: Roger Mastroianni