Damon Gupton, who played Inspector and later Commissioner William Henderson on The CW‘s Black Lightning, will serve as guest conductor for a special concert by the Cincinnati Pops Orchestra this weekend, paying tribute to some of the greatest film scores ever written. According to the Pops, Gupton will lead in a collection of scores that include favorites from Forrest Gump, Schindler’s List, Lincoln, and The Mission, among others. The concert, which takes place on Saturday at 7:30 p.m. ET/4:30 p.m. PT, will be simultaneously livestreamed, and thus will not use any footage from the films in question, which presumably may get the videos flagged for copyright reasons.
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For audiences actually in Cincinnati, the concert will accommodate an audience at the Music Hall. You can get tickets for around $25, or $10 as a first-timer discount. The concert should last around 75 minutes, with no intermission. Per the official website, the May 8 performance of this concert will be livestreamed at cincinnatisymphony.org/live, the Pops’ YouTube channel and the Pops’ Facebook page. You can head over to the CSO & Pops Digital Concert Series page for more details.
Before Black Lightning, audiences would have recognized Gupton from La La Land, Criminal Minds, Bates Motel, or Whiplash (in which he appeared with fellow future Arrowverse alum Melissa Benoist).
While best known for his acting, Gupton conducting an orchestra isn’t much of a stretch. He got his Bachelor of Music Education from the University of Michigan, and has a lengthy musical resume. Here’s a portion of it, as recounted by the Cincinnati Pops website:
A native of Detroit, Michigan, Damon Gupton served as American Conducting Fellow of the Houston Symphony and held the post of assistant conductor of the Kansas City Symphony. His conducting appearances include the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, Detroit Symphony, San Francisco Symphony, Atlanta Symphony, Baltimore Symphony, Cincinnati Pops, National Symphony Orchestra, Toledo Symphony, Fort Worth Symphony, Florida Orchestra, San Diego Symphony, Long Beach Symphony, San Antonio Symphony, Princeton Symphony, Orchestre Philharmonique de Monte Carlo, NHK Orchestra of Tokyo, Orquesta Filarmonica de UNAM, Charlottesville Symphony, Brass Band of Battle Creek, New York University Steinhardt Orchestra, Kinhaven Music School Orchestra, Vermont Music Festival Orchestra, Michigan Youth Arts Festival Honors Orchestra and Sphinx Symphony as part of the 12th annual Sphinx Competition.He led the Sphinx Chamber Orchestra on two national tours with performances at Carnegie Hall and conducted the finals of the Seventh Cliburn International Amateur Piano Competition. Musical collaborations include work with Marcus Miller, Brian Stokes Mitchell, Common, Leslie Odom Jr., Byron Stripling, Tony DeSare, The Midtown Men, Kenn Hicks, Kathleen Battle and Jamie Cullum.
