JUL 30 | Disney and Pixar’s Toy Story in Concert

American conductor Emil de Cou is currently the music director of the Pacific Northwest Ballet and appears regularly with orchestras across the country. After his debut with the National Symphony Orchestra in 2000, he joined the orchestra as associate conductor and led the NSO on national tours and at the US Capitol Building. He has remained a regular figure at The Kennedy Center since his first performances there in 1988. His tenure as principal conductor for the NSO’s Wolf Trap performances included the world premiere screenings of The Wizard of Oz with a live orchestra. He also led the NSO in the Wolf Trap premiere of NASA’s production of Holst’s The Planets narrated by Leonard Nimoy, as well as performances with Joshua Bell, Kiri Te Kanawa, Renee Fleming, James Gallway, and others.  He has appeared with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra several times for holiday, pops, and movie concerts and will conduct their final Ravinia performance in August 2022 in an all-Tchaikovsky concert.

As part of his work as musical consultant for NASA, he has conducted several collaborations with the nation’s space agency, including Human Spaceflight: The Kennedy Legacy, at The Kennedy Center in honor of the 50^th anniversary of John F. Kennedy’s declaration to land a man on the moon. Prior to the performance of 2001: A Space Odyssey, Wolf Trap hosted a pre-performance discussion to mark the 45^th anniversary of the moon landing, which featured Buzz Aldrin, NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden, and de Cou in a talk about the arts and space exploration. In 2019, de Cou led the NSO in performances co-produced by The Kennedy Center and NASA leading up to the 50^th anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon landing, including a premiere work by Michael Giacchino (Voyage) and featuring guest performers will.i.am and John Cho. In co-production with NASA, de Cou conducted the concert Vital Signs of the Planet at the UN Climate Change Conference in Glasgow in 2021. For his ongoing work with NASA, de Cou was awarded the agency’s Exceptional Public Achievement Medal by Administrator Charlie Bolden, the first musician to be so honored.

Emil de Cou was hired by Mikhail Baryshnikov to be the conductor of the American Ballet Theatre for eight seasons, conducting performances at Lincoln Center, The Kennedy Center, as well as on national and international tours. His performance of the ballet Othello was aired on Great Performances (PBS), and the soundtrack by Academy Award-winning composer Elliot Goldenthal was recorded by de Cou for Varese Sarabande; among his other recordings is Debussy Rediscovered for Arabesque Recordings, which includes previously unrecorded works by Debussy and Charles Griffes. De Cou also conducted the world premiere of his reconstruction of the original version of Debussy’s Printemps with the NSO and the Cathedral Choral Society at the National Cathedral.

Emil de Cou has appeared with some of the country’s leading orchestras such as those of Philadelphia, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Detroit, Houston, Milwaukee, Minnesota, Saint Louis, and the Boston Pops. He made his Carnegie Hall debut in 2006 with the New York Pops Orchestra and was the principal pops conductor for the San Francisco Symphony. De Cou was born in Los Angeles, studied with Daniel Lewis at the University of Southern California, and was chosen to study in Leonard Bernstein’s master class at the Hollywood Bowl. He makes his home in San Francisco and Seattle with his husband, conductor Leif Bjaland.

With songs that run the gamut from heartbreaking to satirical and a host of unforgettable film scores, Randy Newman has used his many talents to create musical masterpieces widely recognized by generations of audiences.

After starting his songwriting career as a teenager, Newman launched into recording as a singer and pianist in 1968 with his self-titled album Randy Newman. Throughout the ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s he released several acclaimed albums such as: 12 Songs (1970), Sail Away (1972), Good Old Boys (1974), Little Criminals (1977), Born Again (1979), Trouble in Paradise (1983), Land of Dreams (1988), and Bad Love (1999).

Beginning in 2003, Nonesuch Records released three Randy Newman Songbook volumes, which feature solo recordings of songs from throughout Newman’s five-decade career, as well as Harps and Angels (2008), and the Randy Newman: Live in London CD/DVD (2011).

In addition to his solo recordings and regular international touring, Newman began composing and scoring for films in the 1980s. The list of movies he has worked on since then includes The Natural, Awakenings, Ragtime, all four Toy Story pictures, Monsters Inc. and Monsters University, Seabiscuit, James and the Giant Peach, A Bug’s Life, Meyerowitz Stories, and Marriage Story.

The UK’s Uncut magazine said that Newman’s most recent Nonesuch album, the highly praised Dark Matter (2017), combined these two parts of his career: “Newman’s soundtracks have always been quite separate from his increasingly rare studio albums, but Dark Matter finally sees him uniting those two professions. Here each satirical sketch is lavishly arranged like a miniature film score, with multiple characters, shifting points of view and dramatic lurches in musical style.” The album’s nine songs include the Grammy Award–winning “Putin,” plus songs about the Kennedy brothers, Sonny Boy Williamson, science vs. religion, love and loss, and more.

NPR called Newman a “national treasure” in its album review, saying that he “remains first and foremost a craftsman of song, capable of telling ordinary stories in ways no one quite has before,” and the Chicago Tribune said, “Newman is one of the best songwriters of the last half-century…a master of orchestrating mood and playing a range of flawed characters, depicted in mini aural movies compressed into three verses and three minutes.”

Newman’s many honors include seven Grammys, three Emmys, and two Academy Awards, as well as a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. He was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2002 and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2013—the same year he was given an Ivor Novello PRS for Music Special International Award. Newman was presented with a PEN New England Song Lyrics of Literary Excellence Award in 2014.

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