By: Ethan Rogers
SIMI VALLEY, Calif. On June 27, 2026, history, music, and film converged beneath one of America’s most recognizable presidential aircraft as the New West Symphony became the first symphony orchestra to perform at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library.
The airplane was transformed into a stage for the world premiere of Reagan’s Portrait at the Air Force One Pavilion, where an audience of approximately 1,000 people experienced one-of-a-kind storytelling. The live orchestral music and film drew on original music written for the film by composer and historian Michael Christie.
The evening set out to introduce audiences to a new generation of creative leaders. The experience grew out of a collaboration between Luke Erickson, a board member of the New West Symphony, and director Immanuel Portus, bringing together American history, symphonic music, filmmaking, and fresh creative leadership.
The production was created as part of the nationwide celebration of the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States. The evening blended reflection on the past with a contemporary approach to telling its story.
“America 250 is about celebrating what we have built together,” said Luke Erickson, producer of the premiere and chair of the New West Symphony’s America 250 Taskforce. “We set out to unite people around our shared values and history, in a place where you can truly feel the American spirit.”
For Erickson and Portus, the project carried a larger idea: that young professionals can play a meaningful role in shaping the future of the arts while finding new ways to tell stories rooted in American history.
A Symphony in an Unprecedented Setting
The venue gave the performance an emotional and visual quality unlike anything a traditional concert hall could offer. The Air Force One Pavilion at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library surrounds the airplane used by President Reagan and six of his predecessors. On June 27, the site took on a new identity as musicians, filmmakers, producers, and nearly 1,000 guests gathered for a once-in-a-lifetime event.
The New West Symphony’s performance was the first full-symphony concert ever held at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library.
Reagan’s Portrait, the centerpiece of the evening, was designed as a multimedia experience. As Christie conducted the orchestra, Portus screened his original film in real time, giving the audience visual storytelling and live sound that unfolded together as part of one narrative.
The format was extraordinary. The emotional range of a symphony existed alongside the intimacy and precision of motion picture storytelling, inside a space inextricably linked to the history on screen. Rather than let the film serve as a backdrop or the music as a soundtrack, the creative team built a dialogue between the two art forms. That was the central creative challenge Portus embraced, exploring how cinema can deepen a live musical experience and how historical stories can reach modern audiences through a blend of disciplines.
Luke Erickson’s Role Behind the Premiere
The audience that attended the June 27 premiere enjoyed a finished production, but reaching that point took many months of collaborative work behind the scenes.
As a member of the New West Symphony Board of Directors, chair of the America 250 Taskforce, and producer of the Reagan’s Portrait premiere, Erickson helped guide the project from an ambitious idea to a live performance.
“Luke saw what this could be before anyone else did,” said Immanuel Portus, the film’s director. “Getting a symphony into the Reagan Library, under Air Force One, with a live film premiere. That doesn’t happen without someone willing to push through every door until it opens. That was Luke from day one.”
His work on the production reflects a broader pattern in his career, creating opportunities, building institutions, and connecting people through new ideas. Beyond the symphony, Erickson is the Executive Director of Startup Ventura, a technology accelerator in Ventura County. His career has centered on the intersection of entrepreneurship, economic development, community building, and innovation.
On the surface, a symphony project might seem far removed from building a startup ecosystem, yet the two share a great deal, from forming partnerships and rallying a team around a common goal to managing complexity and turning an idea into something tangible. Here, the result was a historic evening at one of America’s most famous presidential institutions.
The project also let Erickson show that leadership in the arts is not limited by age or a conventional career path. Young professionals, he believes, can help cultural institutions experiment, expand their reach, and build experiences that connect tradition with the next generation. That idea became one of the defining themes of the production.
Immanuel Portus: The Director Behind the Film
Immanuel Portus is a Los Angeles-based director and founder whose work has generated billions of views across global campaigns, with credits spanning Formula One, the Miami Heat, and Oracle Red Bull Racing. When producer Luke Erickson and executive producer Edward Lewis brought him onto the project in November 2025, it asked something entirely different of him. Instead of a campaign built for digital distribution, Portus created an original film designed to exist in real time alongside a live symphony orchestra, inside one of America’s most historically significant spaces.
The film unfolds across four chapters: the story of the American Revolution, a portrait of all 50 states, Reagan’s journey from actor to governor to president alongside his life with Nancy Reagan, and a final canvas of modern America set to “We the People,” exploring what it means to be American today. It was the first original film created specifically for a symphonic premiere at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library.
“Reagan spent his entire life making the case that America is worth believing in; not blindly, but stubbornly, and with open eyes,” Portus said. “At 250 years old, that felt like exactly the right story to tell. I wanted audiences to walk away with that same conviction he carried: that the best of this country is still ahead of us.”
Central to the film’s success was Portus’s close collaboration with music director and conductor Michael Christie. Unlike a traditional film score, this project required the film and music to be built in genuine dialogue. Portus and Christie worked at the level of individual moments, aligning specific scenes to precise musical cues so that each chapter breathed in sync with the orchestra, not just thematically but beat by beat.
Following the premiere’s reception, the New West Symphony is now exploring a national tour of the production, bringing Reagan’s Portrait experience to audiences across the country as part of the broader America 250 celebration.
A Collaboration Between Music and Film
The most singular aspect of the project was the way its disciplines came together. Symphonic music and film have a long shared history, but live multimedia performance poses a distinct challenge. For the visuals to reflect the emotional and rhythmic shape of the music, every element had to cohere so the audience could experience them at once.
Christie led the New West Symphony while Portus directed the film component, pairing established orchestral leadership with contemporary visual language. Erickson served as producer, placing him at the center of that collaboration and letting him weave the elements together through the broader framework of America 250.
The venue itself deepened the significance of the approach. Few settings provide as much context to a performance as the Air Force One Pavilion, a historical landmark in its own right. The challenge was not to compete with that environment but to use music and film to create a new experience within it. For nearly 1,000 guests, the physical presence of the orchestra, the scale of the pavilion, the cinematic imagery, and the weight of history became parts of one shared experience.
A New Generation Stepping Into the Arts
Beyond the spectacle, the story of Reagan’s Portrait is also about who gets to shape major cultural moments. Erickson and Portus represent a generation of professionals whose careers resist easy categories. Erickson’s work spans entrepreneurship, technology, economic development, and the arts. Portus has built a career in global filmmaking and high-impact visual media, and he carried that experience into a live symphonic setting.
Their collaboration suggests that the future of cultural production may increasingly depend on people willing to cross traditional professional boundaries.
“Working with Immanuel was amazing,” Erickson said. “He represents a new generation of creators, someone using serious talent to bring people together rather than pull them apart.”
The arts have always evolved through collaboration. What changes from generation to generation are the tools, the platforms, and the expectations of audiences. Filmmakers now build global audiences through digital platforms. Entrepreneurs bring community-building strategies to cultural institutions. Orchestras team up with visual storytellers to reach beyond the traditional concert experience. The June 27 performance showed what happens when those worlds meet.
For Erickson and Portus, one message stands out: young professionals can make a significant impact on the arts at a national scale. That message feels especially relevant as the United States approaches its 250th anniversary. Celebrating history does not require culture to stay frozen. Honoring the past often asks each generation to find its own language for engaging with it, and for Reagan’s Portrait, that language was live symphonic music paired with cinema.
From One Historic Night to a Larger Vision
The success of the Reagan Library concert has already sparked conversation about what comes next. Erickson and Portus are looking at the possibility of taking the experience on the road across America, reaching new audiences and continuing the mission of celebrating the country’s 250th anniversary through music, film, and historical storytelling.
A touring version could introduce audiences in different regions to an experience born in one of California’s most historically significant venues. It could also model how orchestras, filmmakers, cultural institutions, and younger creative leaders can work together to produce programming that feels both historically grounded and contemporary.
For now, the June 27 performance stands on its own as a milestone. The first symphony concert at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library brought nearly 1,000 people together beneath Air Force One. A live orchestra performed as an original film unfolded alongside it, with Michael Christie leading the New West Symphony, Portus bringing the visual narrative to the screen, and Erickson helping produce the premiere as part of his leadership of the symphony’s America 250 initiative.
It was an evening built around history, but it was also a statement about the future. As the country approaches its 250th anniversary, the question facing cultural institutions is not only how to remember the past, but how to make that history meaningful for audiences today. On June 27, Luke Erickson, Immanuel Portus, Michael Christie, and the New West Symphony offered one answer: bring together people from different disciplines, place an orchestra inside an extraordinary piece of American history, and let music and film tell the story together.
For one night beneath Air Force One, that vision became reality. And if Erickson and Portus’ plans take shape, the premiere at the Reagan Library may prove to be only the beginning.
