Killer Mike & The Mighty Midnight Revival

Houston Symphony Principal POPS Conductor Steven Reineke is one of North America’s leading conductors of popular music. He is in his second decade 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 and can be seen on the podium with the Chicago, Philadelphia, Dallas, and Detroit Symphony Orchestras.

On stage, he creates and collaborates with a range of leading artists from the worlds hip-hop, R & B, Broadway, television, and rock including: Maxwell, Common, Kendrick Lamar, Nas, Ne-Yo, Bob Weir, Trey Anastasio, Barry Manilow, Cynthia Erivo, Ben Rector, Cody Fry, Sutton Foster, Amos Lee, Dispatch, Jason Mraz, and Ben Folds, among others.

In 2024, he led the National Symphony Orchestra (NSO) on PBS’s Next at the Kennedy Center featuring Ben Folds DeClassified with Jacob Collier, Laufey, and dodie. He was previously seen with the NSO on PBS on Great Performances with hip-hop legend Nas performing his seminal album Illmatic. In 2017, he was featured on National Public Radio’s All Things Considered leading the NSO—in a first for the show’s 45-year history—performing live music excerpts between news segments.

As the creator of hundreds orchestral arrangements, Steven’s work is performed worldwide and can be heard on numerous Cincinnati Pops Orchestra recordings. His symphonic works Celebration Fanfare, Legend of Sleepy Hollow, and Casey at the Bat are frequently performed in North America, including performances by the New York Philharmonic and Los Angeles Philharmonic. His Sun Valley Festival Fanfare was used to commemorate 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 perennially performed by concert bands.

A native of Ohio, Steven is a graduate of Miami University of Ohio (2020 Alumnus Distinguished Achievement Medal), where he earned bachelor of music degrees with honors in both trumpet performance and music composition. He currently resides in New York City with his husband Eric Gabbard.

Atlanta’s favorite son Killer Mike gets recognized as many things — a rapper, an advocate for the disenfranchised, an entrepreneur, a Bernie Sanders whisperer, and for his widely lauded advocacy work on political and social causes — which yielded him Billboard’s inaugural 2020 Change Maker Award. Most recently his critically lauded 2023 album MICHAEL earned him three Grammy Awards (Best Rap Album and Best Rap Song & Performance for “SCIENTISTS & ENGINEERS”) for its complex portrait of Black southern masculinity. The honors marked his first awards from the Academy since taking home the Grammy for Best Rap Performance Duo or Group for his 2001 collaboration with Outkast, “The Whole World.”

While Killer Mike has been an active solo artist for over 20 years, releasing numerous studio projects while also collaborating with some of the biggest names in hip-hop (including Outkast, Jay-Z, Big Boi, T.I., Black Thought, and more), he is also widely renowned as half of the popular hip-hop super duo, Run The Jewels, with whom he has released four studio albums alongside his partner in rhyme EL-P. Their most recent, 2020’s RTJ4, soared to the Top 10 on the Billboard 200 and was met with widespread critical acclaim, landing at #1 on NME’s The Best 50 Albums of 2020 list. Named the 2020 Spin Magazine Artist of the Year, Run The Jewels have won eleven Libera Awards, including the 2021 A2IM Humanitarian Award, took home four Clio Awards, including two Gold-winning Music Marketing campaigns, and received a 2018 Grammy nomination for Best Rap Song.

In addition to his success as a musician, Killer Mike has gained wide recognition beyond the industry. He has acted in several films, including Baby Driver, Idlewild, and ATL and showed up TV cameos on Ozark and Billions. He also provided voiceover for the 2021 Netflix film America: The Motion Picture and is the host of multiple series including the Emmy Award winning PBS show Love & Respect with Killer Mike, Facebook’s Roll’N with Killer Mike, and Netflix’s Trigger Warning with Killer Mike, while also turning in regular speaking appearances on Late Show with Stephen Colbert and Real Time with Bill Maher.