No one puts on a show like The New York Pops; as the largest independent pops orchestra in America, they bring the best of film, theatre and television music to Carnegie Hall, which serves as the headquarters of their annual subscription series. This season alone they have brought music from Sex and the City, Thoroughly Modern Millie and The Polar Express to the legendary concert hall, and have featured prominent guests including Kelli O’Hara, Matthew Morrison, and Sutton Foster, who made her solo debut with the orchestra in March of 2015. The New York Pops deliver a unique sound through which they make familiar music seem brand new, a great deal of their success is owed to their Music Director Steven Reineke, who with reason has become one of the country’s most beloved pop conductors.

In 2015, The New York Pops celebrate their 32nd anniversary, and in the middle of what seems to be their greatest season yet, Mr. Reineke was kind enough to fit us into his busy schedule and talk to us about where he gets the inspiration for his shows, working with some of Broadway’s brightest stars, and what’s next for the orchestra.

Let me start off by saying I think I’ve never seen anybody having as much fun as you onstage…

(Laughs) Well I do have a great time, it’s a pretty cool job. Were you there for the Sutton Foster concert? That was such a great night!

I was there yes, and it was indeed fantastic! Can you run us through what it is like to plan a year for the New York Pops? How do you pick the themes and performers?

I kind of do it like I’m just going to be throwing a party and inviting 3,000 people, I come up with what the theme of the party is going to be, some of it is based on friends, incredible artists that we wanna work with like Sutton Foster, or Megan Hilty in the past, and Cheyenne Jackson. Sometimes it’s just based on the kind of music we want to do, sometimes it will be just film music, I’ve been doing one program a year where there’s no guest artists, just the orchestra. Whether it be movie music or classics, I always want to represent Broadway during the season because we live right in the heart of Broadway and have access to so many incredibly talented performers. Also we try to appeal to a wide group of people by having variation, and this orchestra is able of doing so many different styles, from classical music to jazz in one season is really special.

Sutton Foster said that you had many conversations in preparation for her show, so we can gather that a lot of what you do is adjust to the guest performer. How easy is it to maintain the identity of the New York Pops when you are working with such strong personalities?

I know exactly what you mean, and that is very, very important to me and to the orchestra, yes, we often invite wonderful guest artists to be with us, but the point about that is that when the curtain comes down it was a New York Pops show, we’re not a backup band to anybody. We are The New York Pops presenting a special guest, it’s important to us that we always keep our identity.

Was it hard to pick the songs for the upcoming Frank Sinatra tribute?

Uff, there are so many, many songs. When you do a program doing a tribute to Frank Sinatra the catalogue is very wide open because he recorded so many songs, as far as picking the music that came down to conversations with each of the singers to decide what best to do. Of course we knew we needed to include some of the big hits, I mean you pretty much have to do “My Way”, “The Lady is a Tramp”, “New York, New York”, but there are also lesser known ones that we’re gonna be doing like “Birth of the Blues”, “My Funny Valentine”, “Moonlight Becomes You”, which doesn’t get done very much. So just picking great songs, some familiar, not so much, and also we worked on original Nelson Riddle arrangements that he wrote for Frank Sinatra. We’ll be doing some of the original charts that Frank sang for the orchestra. It’s a mix of new and old.

You could technically always go for the obvious choice, but in Sutton’s show for instance you included Jay Ungar’s “Ashokan Farewell” and at the Christmas show last year you featured the song from The Polar Express. How important is it for you to include lesser known pieces?

That is an interesting balancing act and something that I really love to do, what I’ve found is that audiences love familiarity, when you give them music that they know they’re very happy, but they do love when you give them something different that they might have never heard or might have forgotten all about. It’s a matter of mathematically how much of that do you have in the program, if you have too much of that people might get turned off or get bored. You can’t take your audience for granted, they’re not dumb, they’re very savvy, they’re smart, especially here in New York, they’re very open to experiencing new songs, or new arrangements.

You studied Film Music and with the orchestra are proving that popular culture music is just as complex and layered as the best of classical music. Would you say that part of your mission is to blur these snobby preconceptions?

Absolutely, that’s a huge part of my mission, and the people who come hear us witness that first hand, the orchestra is capable of so much more. So many people have this preconceived notion that going to an orchestra concert is going to be really stuffy and snobby and elite, and they’re only going to be listening to Mozart and Brahms, but not when you come to hear the New York Pops.

What are some of your personal favorite scores from movies or TV that you see becoming classics being performed next to Mozart and Beethoven centuries from now?

I think a lot of that is going to be John Williams, as far as the film scores. John Williams is the greatest living composer, he’s certainly the most prolific and he’s written so many famous, wonderful, iconic themes that are so identifiable and can also be taken outside of the context of the movie and played in a concert hall setting and be just as successful. Music from Star Wars, to Schindler’s List, Jurassic Park, Superman, E.T...this music will stand the test of time.

In a past life you must’ve been someone like Glenn Miller. What other famous conductors inspire you?

(Laughs) Leonard Bernstein is one of my great idols, I take a lot from him, he was such an incredible educator, performer, conductor, composer, musician he just had it all. The other one is lesser known worldwide I suppose, but he’s very famous in the symphonic pop world, that was my teacher Erich Kunzel, I was his right hand for fifteen years and I learned so much from him, he was a master showman and an incredible musician.

You’re celebrating The New York Pops 32nd birthday in May. Where do you see the orchestra going in the next 30 years?

There are several things I’d like to see happen and we have irons in the fire for all of these things, one of them is to expand our season, maybe even have some concerts outside of Carnegie Hall. The orchestra used to tour, and I would like to get the orchestra to tour again, whether that be domestically or abroad, in Asia or in Europe. Also to figure out the conundrum that is recording an orchestra, people all the time ask us where to get a recording, a CD or video, and this just doesn’t happen very much, it’s difficult and expensive. I would like to find ways for us to record the orchestra where you can find our recordings on iTunes or YouTube, or get the shows taped for PBS, I think the Sutton Foster show could have, and should have been taped as a television special for the entire country to see. She was so good!

For more about The New York Pops and Steven Reineke visit their official website.