Conductor Steven Reineke believes in the power of pops programming

The word “pops” conjures up blissful thoughts of relaxed musical evenings with friends and lots of irrepressible toe-tapping.

Following in the tradition of pops greats Arthur Fielder and John Williams, the undisputed king of the genre today is the ebullient, Ohio-born conductor-composer Steven Reineke. Exuding an enthusiasm that is positively infectious, Reineke is the music director of the New York Pops at Carnegie Hall and is the principal pops conductor of the National Symphony Orchestra at the Kennedy Center, as well as the Houston and Toronto symphonies. A protégé of Erich Kunzel, known as “The Prince of Pops,” Reineke formerly served as associate conductor of the Cincinnati Pops under Kunzel, as well as the orchestra’s primary arranger.

Reineke credits his destiny to his father, who would sing him to sleep with the popular tunes of the day. “I was drawn to music for the masses, music that people could sing along to," said Reineke, who who will lead the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in his program “Broadway Today” on July 27 at the Ravinia Festival. "It wasn’t high-falutin stuff, which I think had some influence when I became a classical musician.”

Though Reineke formally studied trumpet, he would come home from movies and play through their scores from memory on the piano. “I just figured them out,“ he said, laughing. ”I thought everybody did that.” After college, he came to Kunzel’s attention and the rest, as they say, is history.

So what is pops? And what is its purpose? “It’s getting trickier to give it a strict definition,” Reineke said. “I’m not the biggest fan of the term ’pops.’ It’s pretty old-school. The lines are getting more blurred, as some creative music directors on the so-called classical side are venturing more into collaborations with popular artists who are sometimes outside the classical realm, and vice versa. Pops obviously came originally as a diminutive of popular, so popular music. I guess that’s still right in a way to delineate it from classical literature.

"But on the pops side, the sky is the limit. We have the ability to perform any kind of music that we can make work within an orchestral setting, but it’s often collaborative, based on working with artists in different genres. We can keep the great American songbook alive, we do Nelson Riddle, big band, the Broadway canon, jazz, bluegrass, film music, light classics. We’ve branched into hip-hop and rap and rock ’n’ roll music. We can easily put an orchestra with Billy Joel, Elton John or Sting, or any of these people, and it works.

“It’s important to preserve that wonderful side of music that’s been around for a good 400 years. But I think that orchestras are service organizations as well. We are not just museums or keepers of artifacts, we are a service to our community, and are enlightening them and serving all parts of that community, not just the stereotypical classical music lover. This means reaching out to many different demographics, all the types of people who live within our communities. I want the orchestra to be welcoming to them. And the best way to do that is through programming that entices them to come hear the orchestra perform.

“So that’s where the pops side of things can really expand the reach of an orchestra. In my last 10 years I’ve re-imagined how I think about it, and I think, what is the next part of the community that we are leaving out? It’s about expanding the types of offerings we can do. When I do a collaboration, I make sure it’s a true collaboration,” he said. ”My collaborations are truly a partnership.”

As a composer himself, he also deplores a tendency toward mediocre arrangements that has plagued some pops outings, insisting that the brilliance of the orchestra be respected. “I always make sure the quality we are putting on the stands is as excellent as they are.”

Reineke’s eclecticism is displayed in “Broadway Today.” “I do a lot of golden age of Broadway programs, Rodgers and Hammerstein, Lerner and Loewe,“ he said. ”I wanted to do more contemporary stuff, Broadway of the last 30 years or so. There are a lot of musicals from the last 10 years on here; a lot of these shows are still running or were recently, but more contemporary: ’Newsies,’ ’The Book of Mormon,’ ’The Bridges of Madison County,’ ’Dear Evan Hansen,’ ’Waitress.’ ’Company’ is back on Broadway!’ The other thing I do in this program is an orchestral feature where we focus on the top five longest-running Broadway musicals of all time. ’Wicked’ just became the fifth-longest. It was Les ’Misérables’ last time I did this, so I had to switch out ’Les Misérables’ for a ’Wicked’ thing. Oh, man!"

Above all, he believes that music is a gift. "My joy comes from connecting to people,“ he said. ”Music is meant to be given away. You’re gifting this to the people who are coming to listen. To create that magic, to make music together and share that with the audience and have their enthusiasm and excitement shared back with you — it becomes this symbiotic relationship. When we get that electricity going between the orchestra and an audience, there’s nothing like it. My favorite two hours of any day is when I can be onstage performing a concert in front of a live audience. It is my most joyful time ever. Art is meant to be shared communally. If you don’t have anybody to listen to it, read it or look at it, who does it reach?”

So what would Reineke envision his legacy to be? “That’s a very tough question!” he said with a laugh. “That’s starting to think about mortality, which I tend to not think about much. But I would like to be remembered for honest joy and unfiltered celebration of music, and the sharing of the live experience of that. To know that I’ve touched somebody through what I do as a vocation is probably the biggest thing.”

Right now, he’s too busy living in the present. “I just want to celebrate coming back together again,“ he said. ”This will be the largest ensemble I’ll have had onstage in a year and a half. This is a huge way to celebrate Broadway’s reopening — and for us in Chicago to celebrate getting back together as a community and sharing music as a people.”

Reprinted with permission from Ravinia magazine