An Evening with Rick Steves and the Cincinnati Pops
Two months in as a producer, I realize that I joined Public Media Connect during a decidedly bustling time.
This summer, our production team was busy preparing for the broadcast premiere of Brick by Brick: Solutions for a Thriving Community and putting the final touches on Willis “Bing” Davis: Reach High & Reach Back. We celebrated CET’s 70th anniversary and held our Fall Preview events, and our auction team photographed and assembled an ever-growing amalgamation of items up for the 2024 Action Auction.
And then there was Rick Steves. Yes – that Rick Steves.
On the weekend of September 13, your favorite khaki-donning, budget-minded globe trotter appeared on Cincinnati’s Music Hall stage for Rick Steves’ Europe: A Symphonic Journey. And yours truly was there to witness it – alongside a cornucopia of crew members who filmed the whole spectacle (keep an eye out for the program’s airing in 2025).
Rick Steves’ Europe: A Symphonic Journey, featuring conductor John Morris Russell and the Cincinnati Pops Orchestra, explores Europe through iconic orchestral pieces, from Bedrich Smetana’s “Die Moldau” for the Czech Republic to Edward Elgar’s “Pomp and Circumstance” for England. In between pieces, Rick Steves offered up geographical tidbits and historical context for each piece to convey the significance of each work to a given country.
When Rick took to the stage, my jaw dropped – not because I was starstruck (which I was, and, judging by the applause, the audience was too), but because I’d never seen Rick in anything but his trademark ‘fit. For this show, Rick wore a full suit and tie!
Aside from the wardrobe shake-up, he was still the same Rick we know and love. His cadence in this performance was no different than his voiceovers and lines delivered on-site in various locations around the world. It was pretty much like watching a live-action–albeit music-focused–version of what you see on television.
From a production standpoint, I also got to witness the crew hard at work. The PMC team flanked both sides of the stage, with a total of 18 cameras – including a massive camera jib suspended over the audience – capturing the show. Although I wasn’t involved in this shoot, I made sure to applaud extra hard to show them my support–I really hope they picked that up in the audience footage.
And Rick loves his fans as much as they love him. Ever heard of a mosh pit? Try a Rick pit. At the performance’s end, Rick invited the audience to meet him in the atrium and explicitly instructed them to form a large circle around him for autographs. I saw this whole thing go down (and willingly participated in it). Rick was a marker-wielding, human spinning top in an ever-growing nebula of excited fans. Rick signed programs and the Rick Steves’ Europe Best Destinations travel guides he brought along with him. I’m proud to say I came away with a signature (unscathed).
This concert held a two-fold importance for me. As a born-and-raised Cincinnatian, I’ve attended many a Pops concerts, and before I was a producer, I was a viewer like you (thank you!) who enjoyed watching Rick Steves’ travel programming. I was an International Relations major in college, and I can attribute that in part to PBS-aired programming like Rick Steves’ Europe (alongside the “Global Grover” segment in Sesame Street), which showed me how media can be used to connect people across cultures and backgrounds. It was a truly profound experience for me to see Rick live, now as a producer for your local PBS stations.
Nadya Ellerhorst
CET/ThinkTV Producer
