Dr. Steven Thompson received a music degree from Wichita State University (Wichita, Kansas) in 1987 and then attended the University of Southern California getting his Masters of Music in 1990 and his  Doctorate in 1998. 

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He currently lectures at American River College in Sacramento.  He also directs ARCO, a solid, like-no-other, multi-generational, community college orchestra. Salsa and Hip-hop and Beethoven and who knows what will live on. He has written textbooks, Introduction to Music of the Western World, and Basic Musicianship, and composed a bit of music for good friends, including a collaboration for installations in Beijing, China; and Cologne, Germany. Thompson is music director for the Napa Regional Dance company and a guest conductor with Symphony Napa Valley. He has conducted more productions of Nutcracker than one could shake the proverbial stick.

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Thompson has held orchestral positions with the Los Angeles Classical Ballet, National Orchestra of Costa Rica, and the symphony orchestras of Hiroshima, Japan; New West, Santa Monica, Wichita, and American Youth. In his student days he spent truly idyllic summers at the Pacific Music Festival in Sapporo, Japan; Aspen Music Festival in Colorado; Grand Teton Seminar in Jackson Wyoming; and the Music Academy of the West in Santa Barbara. He believes musicians are most wonderful people, and in Northern California can at times be found on, or perhaps under the stage, next to members of the Sacramento Philharmonic, Opera, Ballet, Choral Society, Music in the Mountains, and others.