No Name Pops names Christopher Dragon its first music director
“His down-for-anything attitude is really going to bring this new age of pops music.”
The once- and future-Philly Pops has named its first music director.
Christopher Dragon will take up the post July 1, by which time the No Name Pops will have taken the name of its predecessor group, the Philly Pops.
The 34-year-old Australia-born conductor said he had been following the saga of the old Philly Pops’ demise, calling it “heartbreaking,” and is already plotting out ideas for his first full season starting this fall.
“For me, it’s a very exciting new chapter, especially being able to shape the orchestra from where it’s coming from and building it basically from the ground up again. I know we can build it back up to what it was.”
Dragon, based in Denver, is currently resident conductor of the Colorado Symphony and music director of the Wyoming Symphony Orchestra (through this season) and Greensboro Symphony (starting this season). This is his first appointment with a pops orchestra, he said, though he has conducted pops along with a wide variety of other repertoire.
Variety is what he intends to bring to Philadelphia. Broadway and Americana — everything from the American Songbook to Copland to jazz — won’t be going away, he said.
“But I want to expand that to include a wider variety of music, so branching out to maybe hip-hop, to the R&B side, to incorporate more film, more video game music.”
Dragon is also talking about collaborating with bands “which you might not necessarily think would go with a symphony orchestra. For example, in Colorado we’ve done collaborations with the Wu-Tang Clan and Cypress Hill, these groups which you would never think would ever be paired with a symphony orchestra, but actually work extremely well.”
He takes pops music, he says, “just as seriously as I do any Mahler or Mozart symphony. To me, they’re equally as important.”
The No Name Pops did not conduct a formal search for its first music director, said executive director Matthew Koveal. “Everybody who came through and conducted our orchestra was considered,” he said, and the decision to engage Dragon was made by the board.
“I have seen firsthand how Chris captivates audiences,” Koveal said. “He is one of these characters who people show up just to see. His down-for-anything attitude is really going to bring this new age of pops music.”
Dragon began studying piano at the age of 4 or 5, and took up clarinet, he believes, around 9. He earned a bachelor’s of music degree from the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts in Perth, where he grew up.
“But when I would go to symphony concerts, I would always just be transfixed on the conductor. I don’t know what it was about the conductor. Even playing in an orchestra, I would absorb absolutely everything that the conductor said.”
He pulled together his own orchestra of friends to gain experience and joined the Symphony Services International Conductor Development Program in Australia, working with conductor Christopher Seaman. He studied with Paavo and Neeme Jarvi at the Jarvi Summer Festival, and Fabio Luisi at the Pacific Music Festival. Privately, he worked with conducting pedagogue Jorma Panula and conductor Leonid Grin.
In explaining the shift from clarinet to conducting, he said: “I wanted more of an input in the overall music making, to really shape the overall sound of the orchestra rather than just my single line.”
It was during his studies with Grin at Grin’s home in Wyncote when Dragon had his first encounter with Philadelphia.
“I would fly all the way from Australia,” said Dragon. “I would basically have lessons for a week and half or two weeks, and then fly back. I came only maybe three or four times, but also I was very young [23] and didn’t really get to explore.”
More recently, this past November, Dragon was in Philadelphia to conduct the No Name Pops in its “California Dreamin’” program — the only time he has led the group so far.
“That’s the first time I really got to experience Philadelphia, getting to the restaurants and being downtown. My wife and I love it. We love the people of Philadelphia. I feel like the mentality of the people in Philadelphia really fits with us, this kind of no-B.S. attitude. It’s just straight to the point, the grittiness, the determination — I love it.”
It was that grit in part that drew Dragon to the job.
About the musicians:
“They’re committed from the very start of rehearsal until the end. They were rehearsing hard, and that’s how I like to work as a conductor. I’m pretty intense on the podium.”
But he’s also impressed with the determination of the organization’s leaders. After the Philly Pops went into a tailspin with a shutdown announcement and lawsuits beginning in November 2022 and eventually suspended operations, it was the musicians who picked up the pieces, starting a new pops orchestra under different leadership and, most recently, being gifted the Philly Pops name by the family of the late, longtime music director Peter Nero.
“The musicians that formed this new orchestra and the staff that has come on — I truly believe in them,” said Dragon. “That is why I signed on, it’s because I believe in what they’re doing, and I want to be part of that journey to help them succeed.”