A native of London, John Powell was an accomplished violinist as a child, wrote music for commercials out of school, and assisted composer Patrick Doyle in the early 1990s. He moved to the U.S. in 1997, where he worked on numerous projects for Hans Zimmer and his film music company, Remote Control. He cowrote the score for Antz with Harry Gregson-Williams and quickly became one of the most sought-after, versatile, and exciting composers in town.
Powell was catapulted into the realm of A-list composers by displaying an entirely original voice with his oft-referenced scores to the first installment of Matt Damon’s Bourne trilogy, The Bourne Identity, from 2002. He has become the go-to writer for family animated films, scoring such hits as Shrek (cowritten with Harry Gregson-Williams), Chicken Run (cowritten with Harry Gregson-Williams), Ice Age: The Meltdown, Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs, Bolt, Rio, Happy Feet, Happy Feet Two, and the first two installments of Kung Fu Panda (cowritten with Hans Zimmer). His pulsating action music has provided the fuel for Hancock, Green Zone, Stop Loss, Mr. & Mrs. Smith, and The Italian Job. His music has also sweetened the romance of Two WeeksNotice and P.S.: I Love You. In 2006, his music empowered X-Men: The Last Stand, lent tenderness to I Am Sam, and added gripping, real-time drama to United 93.
His infectious score for How to Train Your Dragon earned Powell his first Academy Award nomination. He has also lent his voice to the score of Dr. Seuss’s The Lorax, Ice Age: Continental Drift, Rio 2, directed by Carlos Saldanha, and DreamWorks’s How to Train Your Dragon 2. His work can be found in Warner Bros.’ Pan, starring Hugh Jackman, Universal Pictures’ action-thriller Jason Bourne, starring Matt Damon, and Fox’s Oscar-nominated, animated feature Ferdinand. Most recently for Powell was Disney’s highly anticipated Solo: A Star Wars Story, directed by Ron Howard, which gave him the opportunity to collaborate with John Williams.
Most recently, Powell’s music can be heard in the critically acclaimed final installment of DreamWorks Animation’s How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World, directed by Dean DeBlois.
In addition to his numerous film scores of all genres, Powell has also written concert works for choir and orchestra. A selection of these was released last June with the album Hubris–Choral Works by John Powell, including his deeply moving “A Prussian Requiem.” (Photo by Melinda Lerner)
Constantine Kitsopoulos has established himself as a dynamic conductor known for his ability to work in many different genres and settings. He is equally at home with opera, symphonic repertoire, film with live orchestra, musical theater, and composition. His work has taken him worldwide, where he has conducted the major orchestras of North America as well as the Hong Kong Philharmonic and the Tokyo Philharmonic. The 2024-25 season brings Kitsopoulos back for return engagements with the Vancouver, San Francisco, New Jersey, Detroit, and Seattle symphonies, among others. Highlights of previous seasons include return engagements with the New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, and the Dallas, Phoenix, Pacific, Houston, Vancouver, New Jersey, Toronto, Detroit, Chicago, Santa Barbara, and San Francisco symphonies. In addition to Kitsopoulos’s engagements as guest conductor, he was music director of the Festival of the Arts Boca (2010-23), general director of Chatham Opera (2005-15), and assistant chorus master at New York City Opera (1984-89). He has developed semistaged productions of Mozart’s The Magic Flute (for which he has written a new translation), Don Giovanni, and La Bohème. He has conducted IU Jacobs Opera Theater productions of Mass, Candide, Falstaff, DieFledermaus, A View from the Bridge, H.M.S. Pinafore, The Most Happy Fella, SouthPacific, Oklahoma, The Music Man, The Last Savage, and Sweeney Todd, as well as Jacobs Live at the Movies presentations of Jurassic Park in Concert, Back to the Future, and E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial. On Broadway, Kitsopoulos has been music director of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella, the Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess (cast album on PS Classics), A Catered Affair (cast album on PS Classics), Coram Boy, Baz Luhrmann’s production of Puccini’s La Bohème (cast album on DreamWorks Records), Swan Lake, and Les Misérables. He was music director of ACT’s production of Weill and Brecht’s Happy End and conducted the only English-language recording of the piece for Sh-K-Boom Records. Kitsopoulos studied piano with Marienka Michna, Chandler Gregg, Edward Edson, and Sophia Rosoff. He studied conducting with Semyon Bychkov, Sergiu Comissiona, Gustav Meier, and his principal teacher, Vincent La Selva.
