John Morris Russell, Cincinnati Pops Conductor, Louise Dieterle Nippert & Louis Nippert Chair
John Morris Russell’s (JMR) 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, the wide range and diversity of his 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, JMR 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 and Mandy Gonzalez.
A popular guest conductor, JMR has worked with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Cleveland Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, Boston Pops and the National Symphony of Washington, D.C. He frequently conducts Canadian orchestras, including Toronto, Calgary and Vancouver, and has led the orchestras of Milwaukee, Pittsburgh, Detroit, Houston, Indianapolis, Dallas and Minnesota, as well as the Utah Symphony, Oregon Symphony, Colorado Symphony and New Jersey Symphony. JMR makes his St. Louis Symphony Orchestra debut in 2025. His work in opera and musical theatre includes Cincinnati Opera, where he conducted its first production of Hans Krása’s Brundibár and the world premiere of 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, JMR has regularly led the National Orchestral Institute (NOI) and Festival in College Park, Maryland, 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 Seven Deadly Sins in a program to be repeated 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 1997–2009, a continuation of the program launched by Walter Damrosch in 1891 and continued under Leonard Bernstein, and he has piloted educational programs with the symphony orchestras of Cincinnati, Windsor and Hilton Head.
For over two decades, JMR 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. Guest artists have included Marvin Winans, Alton White, George Shirley, Common and Hi-Tek.
JMR 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 features 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). The 2020 “American Originals” concert King Records and the Cincinnati Sound with Late Show pianist Paul Shaffer honored legendary recording artists associated with the Queen City. In the 2024–25 season JMR takes on the next installment of the project, offering a concert and recording celebrating the legacy of the Harlem Renaissance, and presents a national PBS broadcast of Rick Steves Europe: A Symphonic Journey. JMR’s American Soundscapes video series with the Pops and Cincinnati’s CET public television station, has surpassed one million views on YouTube since its launch in 2016.
JMR served as Music Director of the Windsor Symphony Orchestra (WSO) 2001–2012, where he conducted more than 40 world premieres and recorded 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 and Williams College, 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.
Photo Credit: Roger Mastroianni