LAURA JACKSON — now in her ninth season as music director of the Reno Philharmonic — continues to win praise for her artistry, leadership, innovative programming, and creative community engagement. 

Her passion and drive have helped the Reno Philharmonic reach new heights with cutting edge composer-in-residence projects as well as vibrant performances of traditional repertoire. New works that Jackson has commissioned in partnership with the Reno Phil have enjoyed multiple performances nationwide.

In addition to concerts with the Reno Philharmonic, Ms. Jackson guest conducts nationally and internationally. Performances this season will include concerts with the symphonies of Eugene, Hartford, Charlottesville, Hawaii, Flint, The Philly POPS and L’Orchestre symphonique de Bretagne in France. Last season, Jackson returned to the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra where she previously served as their first-ever female assistant conductor from 2004-7.

Jackson recorded Michael Daugherty’s Time Cycle on Naxos with the Bournemouth Symphony in partnership with Marin Alsop and received an invitation from the U.S. State Department in 2013 to serve as the first American to lead the Algerian National Orchestra. Other international engagements include concerts in China and the Philippines. In North America, she has performed with the symphonies of Alabama, Baltimore, Berkeley, Detroit, Phoenix, San Antonio, Toledo, Toronto, Windsor, and Winnipeg, among others.

Prior to her appointment in Atlanta, she studied conducting at the University of Michigan and spent summers at the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s Tanglewood Music Center in 2002 and 2003. As the Seiji Ozawa Conducting Fellow at Tanglewood, she conducted numerous concerts featuring both traditional and contemporary repertoire.

Ms. Jackson spent her early childhood in Virginia and Pennsylvania before moving at age 11 to Plattsburgh, NY, where she grew up waterskiing, swimming, and sailing on Lake Champlain. She fell in love with the violin in public school, later attending the North Carolina School for the Arts to finish high school. She pursued an undergraduate degree at Indiana University where she studied both violin and conducting before moving to Boston in 1990 to freelance as a violinist and teach at Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire.

Capathia Jenkins, most recently starred as ‘Medda’ in the hit Disney production of Newsies on Broadway. She made her Broadway debut in The Civil War, where she created the role of Harriet Jackson. She then starred in the Off-Broadway 2000 revival of Godspell, where she wowed audiences with her stirring rendition of ‘Turn Back, O Man’ which can still be heard on the original cast recording. She returned to Broadway in The Look of Love and was critically acclaimed for her performances of the Bacharach/David hits. Ms. Jenkins then created the roles of ‘The Washing Machine’ in Caroline, Or Change and ‘Frieda May’ in Martin Short-Fame Becomes Me where she sang ‘Stop the Show’ and brought the house down every night.

In 2007, she went back to Off-Broadway and starred in (mis) Understanding Mammy-The Hattie McDaniel Story for which she was nominated for a Drama Desk Award. Most recently she was seen in Nora Ephron’s Love, Loss, and What I Wore.

Her television credits include 30 Rock, the Practice, Law & Order SVU, the Sopranos, Law & Order. She can be seen in the 2012 film Musical Chairs and in NBC’s live performance of The Wiz. She can be heard on the film soundtracks Nine, Chicago, Legally Blonde 2.