Larry Blank, Resident Pops ConductorLarry Blank is one of the most prolific and sought-after conductors, orchestrators, and arrangers in the entertainment business. He has been with the Pasadena Pops for thirteen years and leads its summer series at the Los Angeles County Arboretum, where his curated concerts celebrate Broadway, film, and the Great American Songbook.Larry made his Broadway debut as original conductor of Marvin Hamlisch’s They’re Playing Our Song. He has been music director, conductor, or vocal arranger for many productions on Broadway and in Los Angeles, including Evita, The Phantom of the Opera, Sugar Babies, La Cage aux Folles, A Chorus Line, and A Little Night Music.
As an orchestrator, he has received three Tony Award and Drama Desk Award nominations, for The Drowsy Chaperone, Irving Berlin’s White Christmas, and Catch Me If You Can (with Marc Shaiman).He received further Drama Desk nominations for A Christmas Story and Honeymoon in Vegas. He contributed orchestrations to The Producers on stage and screen and to the film Chicago. He orchestrated and conducted the musical numbers for FX’s Fosse/Verdon and Dolly Parton’s Christmas on the Square.
Since 2025, Larry has been music director of the first French production of Stephen Sondheim’s Company, a Génération Opéra coproduction touring more than a dozen opera houses in France and Switzerland. They include the Opéra de Massy, the Opéra national de Bordeaux, the Opéra de Rennes, the Opéra Nice Côte d’Azur, the Opéra Grand Avignon, the Opéra de Limoges, and the Grand Théâtre de Genève, where he conducted the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande. The tour concludes at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris in April 2027.In the UK, Larry was a regular conductor and arranger for BBC Radio 2’s Friday Night Is Music Night, and he served as music supervisor and orchestrator, with Mark Cumberland, for the Olivier Awards in London. The Olivier Awards theme he composed is still used at the ceremony every year.He has worked with many great performers, notably as personal conductor to Michael Crawford, and with Bernadette Peters, Bette Midler, Plácido Domingo, Quincy Jones, Jerry Herman, Marvin Hamlisch, Michael Feinstein, Christine Baranski, Kelsey Grammer, Ann-Margret, and Diana Rigg. His film and television work includes The American President, South Park, Jerry Herman’s Mrs. Santa Claus with Angela Lansbury, and music for the Grammy Awards and Academy Awards.
Larry has guest conducted orchestras around the world, including the New York Philharmonic, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Boston Pops, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the San Francisco Symphony, and the National Symphony Orchestra.
In 2026, he received the President’s Award from the American Society of Music Arrangers and Composers (ASMAC). He is the author of I Was Playing Their Song, a memoir of his theater career. His new book, Orchestrating for Musical Theatre: A Memoir of Craft, Broadway, and the Music in Between, will be released soon.