The Smartest People In The Room^®

John Kinsner and Richard Kraft

John Kinsner is co-founder and CEO of Black Ink Presents, a company he sold to Sony Masterworks in 2023. His remarkable journey started with sweeping floors in venues when he was a teenager, and along the way he has held numerous production related jobs with AEG, Live Nation and other independent venues. Mature and accomplished way beyond his years, his company specializes in producing "live to film" shows, which feature a full orchestra playing the score to a film live and synced to a screening of the film. Some of the tours he's produced include Batman, Ghostbusters, The Nightmare Before Christmas and Labyrinth.

Richard Kraft is an award winning producer who co-owns Kraft-Engel Management, one of the world’s leading agencies specializing in representing film, theatre, television and video game composers, songwriters and music supervisors. Among his many production credits include Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas in Concert, Disney’s The Little Mermaid in Concert, and Beauty and the Beast in Concert, Alan Menken’s one-man show A Whole New World of Alan Menken.

The Smartest People In The Room^® is a series of one-on-one conversations between music industry executives and personalities hosted by Tom Truitt, Managing Director of the Music & Live Entertainment practice. These hour long conversations draw an audience of hundreds and feature every type of global music industry executive, including agents, managers, attorneys, business managers, promoters, publishers, working musicians, songwriters. The audience is global, with strong concentration in music business centers like New York City, Los Angeles, Nashville, London, Toronto, San Francisco, Austin and more.