Common with the Houston Symphony

Steven Reineke has established himself as one of North America’s leading conductors of popular music. In addition to his role as Principal POPS Conductor of the Houston Symphony, this season, he celebrates his 10^th anniversary as music director of The New York Pops at Carnegie Hall. Additionally, he is principal pops conductor of the National Symphony Orchestra at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and the Toronto Symphony Orchestra.

Steven is a frequent guest conductor with The Philadelphia Orchestra and his extensive North American conducting appearances include Atlanta, Cincinnati, Edmonton, San Francisco, and Sarasota.

On stage, he has created programs and collaborated with a range of leading artists from the worlds of hip hop, Broadway, television, and rock, including Common, Kendrick Lamar, Nas, Sutton Foster, Megan Hilty, Cheyenne Jackson, Wayne Brady, Peter Frampton, and Ben Folds, among others. In 2017, he was featured on NPR’s All Things Considered leading the National Symphony Orchestra, in a first for the show’s 45-year history, performing live music excerpts between news segments. In 2018, Steven led the same orchestra and hip hop legend Nas performing his seminal album, Illmatic, on PBS’s Great Performances.

As the creator of more than 100 orchestral arrangements for the Cincinnati Pops Orchestra, Steven’s work has been performed worldwide, and can be heard on numerous Cincinnati Pops Orchestra recordings on the Telarc label. His symphonic works Celebration Fanfare, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Casey at the Bat are performed frequently in North America, including performances by the New York Philharmonic and Los Angeles Philharmonic. His Sun Valley Festival Fanfare commemorated the Sun Valley Summer Symphony’s pavilion, and his Festival Te Deum and Swan’s Island Sojourn were debuted by the Cincinnati Symphony and Cincinnati Pops Orchestras. His numerous wind ensemble compositions are published by the C.L. Barnhouse Company and are performed by concert bands worldwide.

A native of Ohio, Steven is a graduate of Miami University of Ohio, where he earned Bachelor of Music degrees with honors in both trumpet performance and music composition. He lives in New York City with his husband, Eric Gabbard.

Academy Award, Emmy and Grammy-winning artist, actor, author, and activist, Common continues to break down barriers with a multitude of diverse roles and continued success.

Common currently stars in the film Alice. Inspired by true events, the plot follows a woman of servitude in 1800s Georgia, who escapes the 55-acre confines of her captor to discover the shocking reality that exists beyond the tree line…it’s 1973.

His extensive film and television performances include the hit Netflix series Never Have I Ever and Selma (alongside John Legend, he won the 2015 Academy Award and 2016 Grammy for Best Original Song in a Motion Picture for “Glory,” which was featured in the film), among many others. Common executive-produced the Netflix drama Burning Sands and performed the original song “The Cross.” He executive produces Showtime’s hit TV series The Chi, a coming-of-age story set in Chicago. He lent his voice to the Warner Bros animated film Smallfoot.

His latest album, A Beautiful Revolution Part 2, (Loma Vista Recordings) is a timely follow-up to his A Beautiful Revolution Part 1, which was written during the height of the pandemic when racial and social justice protests, a contested election, and economic collapse were polarizing the country. The albums are a call to action, but one that sees the world in a new light, a chance to create a better tomorrow and a responsibility to never forget the past.

Common is doing his part. He recently launched The Stardust Kids, an incubator and accelerator collective for emerging artists and creative entrepreneurs that encourages artists of various disciplines to come together and develop their art and commerce. Deeply engaged in social justice and advocacy work around mass incarceration, mental health, and voting, he launched Imagine Justice, a nonprofit centered at the intersection of art and activism, dedicated to leveraging the power of art to advocate for communities, fight for justice and equality, and stand united against injustice wherever it appears. His Common Ground Foundation is dedicated to empowering high school students from underserved communities to become future leaders. Foundation students have a 100 percent high school graduation rate.