Coco with Live Orchestra

Conner Gray Covington leads an unusually broad range of symphonic, opera, and film repertoire ranging from the Classical era to the present day. During his four-year tenure with the Utah Symphony as associate conductor and principal conductor of the Deer Valley Music Festival, he conducted nearly 300 performances of classical subscription, education, film, pops, and family concerts, as well as tours throughout the state. Previously, he was a conducting fellow at the Curtis Institute of Music, where he worked closely with the Curtis Symphony Orchestra, with whom he made his Carnegie Hall debut, while being mentored by Philadelphia Orchestra music director Yannick Nézet-Séguin. Covington is a five-time recipient of a Career Assistance Award from the Solti Foundation US, and was a featured conductor in the Bruno Walter National Conductor Preview presented by the League of American Orchestras. His recent and upcoming concert engagements include the San Diego Symphony, Tallahassee Symphony, Amarillo Symphony, and Bellingham Festival of Music. He made his San Francisco Symphony debut in November 2024.

Born in Louisiana, Covington graduated from the High School for the Performing and Visual Arts in Houston and went on to study violin at the University of Texas at Arlington. He continued his studies at the Eastman School of Music, where he earned a master’s degree in orchestral conducting and was awarded the Walter Hagen Conducting Prize.

Composer Michael Giacchino has credits that feature some of the most popular and acclaimed film projects in recent history, including The Incredibles, War for the Planet of the Apes, Ratatouille, Star Trek, Jurassic World, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, Spider-Man: Homecoming, and Coco. Giacchino’s 2009 score for the Pixar hit Up earned him an Oscar, a Golden Globe, the BAFTA, the Broadcast Film Critics’ Choice Award, and two Grammy Awards.

Giacchino studied filmmaking at the School of Visual Arts in New York. After college, he landed a marketing job at Disney and began studies in music composition, first at Juilliard, and then at UCLA. He moved from marketing to producing in the newly formed Disney Interactive Division where he had the opportunity to write music for video games.

After moving to DreamWorks Interactive, he was asked to score the temp track for the video game adaptation of The Lost World: Jurassic Park. Subsequently, Steven Spielberg hired him as the composer and it became the first PlayStation game to have a live orchestral score, recorded with members of the Seattle Symphony. Giacchino went on to score numerous video games including Spielberg’s Medal of Honor series.

Giacchino’s work in video games sparked the interest of J.J. Abrams, and thus began their long-standing relationship that would lead to scores for the hit television series Alias and Lost, and the feature films Mission Impossible III, Star Trek, Super 8, and Star Trek Into Darkness.

Additional projects include collaborations with Disney Imagineering on music for Space Mountain, Star Tours (with John Williams), the Ratatouille ride in Disneyland Paris, and the Incredicoaster on Pixar Pier at California Adventure. Giacchino was the musical director of the 81st Annual Academy Awards. His music can be heard in concert halls internationally with all three Star Trek films, Ratatouille, Jurassic World, Up, and Coco being performed live-to-picture with a full orchestra. In June 2018, Giacchino premiered his first work for symphony orchestra, Voyage. Commissioned by the National Symphony and the Cincinnati Pops Orchestra, the piece celebrates the 60th anniversary of the founding of NASA. In July 2019, a third movement was added for the 50th anniversary of the moon landing.

Giacchino serves as the governor of the music branch of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and sits on the advisory board of Education Through Music Los Angeles.