Maestro John Morris Russell
Maestro John Morris Russell has consistently won international praise for his extraordinary music-making and visionary leadership. Since his appointment as Music Director of the Windsor Symphony Orchestra in 2001, Mr. Russell has ushered in a new era of unprecedented artistic growth for the WSO and has invigorated the musical life of the Windsor-Essex region. A two-time recipient of Ontario’s Lieutenant Governor’s Award for the Arts, as well as the Ontario Arts Council’s Vida Peene Award for Artistic Excellence, Maestro Russell and the WSO have also won coveted nominations for both the Gemini Awards (2004) and Juno Awards (2008). Now in his eighth season, Mr. Russell conducts 16 weeks with the WSO including Masterworks and Pops subscription programmes, concerts on the new Intimate Classics series, and the prestigious Windsor Canadian Music Festival.
As a guest conductor, Maestro Russell has led many of North America’s most distinguished ensembles, including the orchestras of Toronto, Edmonton, Victoria, Detroit, Houston, Indianapolis, Dallas, Minnesota, Louisville, Miami’s New World Symphony, the Oregon Symphony, Colorado Symphony, New York City Ballet, and the New York Philharmonic. 2008 marks Mr. Russell’s twelfth season with Carnegie Hall, where he conducts the “LinkUP!” educational concert series, the oldest and most celebrated series of its kind in the Western Hemisphere, created by Walter Damrosch in 1891 and made famous by Leonard Bernstein. This season, Maestro Russell makes his debut with the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl, and has return engagements with the Toronto and Indianapolis Symphony Orchestras and a special homecoming performance with the Savannah Sinfonietta, in Savannah, Georgia.
Under Maestro Russell’s leadership, the Windsor Symphony Orchestra has made fifteen national broadcasts on CBC Radio 2, including “The Music of Freedom” on Sunday Afternoon in Concert with Bill Richardson in May 2008. The WSO’s first nationally televised production was created with Mr. Russell for the CBC series Opening Night, which subsequently won the Gold Worldmedal for “Best Performance Program” at the New York Festivals Awards for Television and New Media, as well as a Gemini Award Nomination. In 2006 the Windsor Symphony Orchestra released Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf narrated by the internationally acclaimed actor, Colm Feore, and Last Minute Lulu, composed by WSO Composer-in-Residence, Brent Lee, with text by the Newbery Medal winning author, Christopher Paul Curtis. The recording won Mr. Russell and the WSO its first Juno nomination for Best Children’s Album in 2008.
Maestro Russell has also taken an active role in creating and revitalizing musical programmes and programming to develop young listeners and musicians in the region. He crafted two new concert series, Peanut Butter n’ Jam and Family Jamboree, specifically for youngsters and families, and spearheaded the creation of the Windsor-Essex Youth Choir and the Windsor Symphony Youth Orchestra. Mr. Russell’s passionate support of music in the schools has forged performance partnerships with the University of Windsor School of Music, the Windsor Centre for the Creative Arts and dozens of choral, dance and performing ensembles throughout the community. With the creation of the One Community—One Symphony project in 2008, Maestro Russell now works with over 500 teenagers in 10 school band programmes, representing French, Catholic and Public School Boards, in rehearsals and performances with the WSO. His enormously successful Education Concerts engage over 12,000 students and teachers annually in Essex, Lambton and Kent Counties.
As one of the nation’s strongest advocates for new music, Maestro Russell has helped nurture many new voices in Canadian music, conducting numerous Windsor premieres of important Canadian works and over 40 world premieres of commissioned compositions. Mr. Russell created the WSO’s first multi-year composer-in-residence position, and is deeply involved in the production of the annual Windsor Canadian Music Festival, described by CBC producer David Jaeger as, “one of the most exciting and innovative developments to appear lately in the Canadian musical scene.”
Mr. Russell served as associate conductor of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra for eleven years where he regularly led concerts at the Music Hall and the Riverbend Music Center. Widely recognized for his innovative programming and commitment to attracting new and diverse audiences to orchestral music, Maestro Russell created the Classical Roots: Spiritual Heights series, which brought the music of African-American composers and performers to thousands of listeners in area churches, and was also the co-creator of the Christmas spectacular, Home for the Holidays. In September of 1999, Mr. Russell replaced Erich Kunzel with an hour’s notice to conduct the Pops’ opening weekend concerts. The following week he substituted for Maestro Kunzel in concerts on the stage of the famed Musikverein in Vienna, featuring the Harlem Boychoir, the Vienna Boys Choir and actor Gregory Peck. The performance continues to be televised throughout Europe, Japan and in the USA on PBS.
Maestro Russell has also served as associate conductor of the Savannah Symphony Orchestra, director of the orchestral programme at Vanderbilt University, and music director with the College Light Opera Company in Falmouth, Massachusetts. He received a Master of Music degree in conducting from the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, and a Bachelor of Arts degree in music from Williams College in Massachusetts. He has also 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.