Miami University

News Release

News and Public Information Office
Glos Center
Miami University
Oxford, Ohio 45056
(513) 529-7592
(513) 529-1950 fax
newsinfo@muohio.edu

Miamian to lead New York Pops Fourth of July NBC telecast

06/30/2009

Email this Article

Steven Reineke

Steven Reineke, a 1993 graduate of Miami University, will conduct The New York Pops in the nationwide telecast of the 2009 Macy’s Fourth of July Fireworks Spectacular on NBC at 9 p.m. Saturday, July 4. The entertainment also will be simulcast in radio on 1010 WINS.

Reineke, a native of Ohio who earned bachelor of music degrees from Miami with honors in both trumpet performance and music composition, is The New York Pops director-designate and conductor, becoming the orchestra’s music director Oct. 1, 2009.

Reineke succeeds the organization’s founder, Skitch Henderson, who died in 2005. He will conduct the orchestra’s annual concert series at Carnegie Hall as well as tours, recordings, and nationwide telecasts.

Reineke won Miami's Joanna Jackson Goldman Memorial Prize in 1993, and used it to study and write music with film composers in Los Angeles. The Goldman Prize is meant to allow a Miami student to follow a dream.

A protégé of Erich Kunzel, Reineke is currently associate conductor of the Cincinnati Pops Orchestra. As the creator of more than one hundred orchestral arrangements for the Cincinnati Pops during the past 13 years, Reineke’s arrangements have been performed worldwide and have been described as “melodious and joyous.”

Retired Miami marching band director and professor of music theory and composition David Shaffer has fond memories of Reineke. “I knew from day one that he had something special. His senior recital included a couple of pieces that he wrote and it was just incredible,” Shaffer said. “He’s one of the most friendly, outgoing people you’ll ever meet, which is why he’ll be so good in his position with The New York Pops, but there’s no doubt in my mind that he’ll come back to the Cincinnati Pops one day.”

Reineke is planning to return to Miami during homecoming weekend 2009 when Miami’s combined choirs will perform a fanfare he wrote for the Gala Bicentennial concert in Millett Hall. His recent guest conducting appearances include the orchestras of Los Angeles, Cincinnati, Houston, Dallas, Detroit, Indianapolis, Baltimore and Edmonton.

Also an established symphonic composer, Reineke’s works include “Celebration Fanfare," "Legend of Sleepy Hollow” and “Casey at the Bat” that are performed frequently in North America, with the most recent performances by the New York Philharmonic and Los Angeles Philharmonic in July 2008. In August 2008 his “Sun Valley Festival Fanfare” debuted with the Sun Valley Symphony Orchestra to commemorate the opening of the orchestra’s new pavilion. In 2005 his “Festival Te Deum” and “Swan’s Island Sojourn” were performed by the Cincinnati Symphony and Cincinnati Pops respectively.