MESSAGE FROM OUR FESTIVAL PARTNERS

The Journeys of Faith program in the Festival of American Music has been a wonderful catalyst for building and deepening relationships between members of the Jewish and Black communities in Louisville. It has been a tremendous honor to work with clergy from across the city and LO leadership to more fully unlock the potential of this music to bring people together.

The juxtaposition of Leonard Bernstein’s Age of Anxiety with Joel Thompson’s Awaken The Sleeper in the festival program spurred our communities to gather and examine texts literally from the Bible to Baldwin. It was tremendously exciting to think about the ways in which these ancient and modern texts speak to many of the same hopes, dreams, and of course, anxieties we experience today. Our collaborative study helped us find commonalities in our stories and interpretations that we might have otherwise missed, and it also enabled us to tease out the differences in the ways in which our communities have experienced life in Louisville, Kentucky.

We often think of relationships as happening organically and without effort, but that’s simply not the case. Relationships are seeded and grown with care and intentionality. The deep engagement that comes with discussion and appreciation of music, text, and personal stories is a wonderful foundation for relationships that I hope will continue to bear fruit for many years to come.

Rabbi Ben Freed Keneseth Israel Congregation

Establishing connection across race, religion, and culture is one of the most powerful things that we can do to bring about the Beloved Community! In partnership with the Louisville Orchestra, Black congregations in the Christian Tradition and Jewish Congregations are centering music, the study of Sacred Texts, and conversation to strengthen understanding between communities and thereby pave a path forward toward a brighter more inclusive future. I am excited by the possibilities of what the future of this partnership holds!

Rev. Dr. Corrie Shull Senior Pastor Burnett Avenue Baptist Church

POPS SERIES

March 18

Back to the 80’s

April 7

The Texas Tenors

CLASSICS SERIES

April 1

Rach & Bartok

May 13 From Silence to Splendor

COFFEE SERIES

May 12 From Silence to Splendor

FAMILY SERIES

March 26

Cultures Crossing

FILM CONCERT SERIES

April 21

Harry Potter in Concert

The Order of the Phoenix

TEDDY ABRAMS, MUSIC DIRECTOR

Named Musical America’s 2022 Conductor of the Year, Teddy Abrams is the widely acclaimed Music Director of the Louisville Orchestra. In his ninth season as Music Director, Abrams launches the Orchestra’s groundbreaking Creators Corps – a fully funded residency for three composers – and the Orchestra goes on tour across Kentucky in a first-ofits-kind multiyear funding commitment from the Kentucky State Legislature.

Abrams’s rap-opera, The Greatest: Muhammad Ali, premiered in 2017, celebrating Louisville’s hometown hero with an all-star cast that included Rhiannon Giddens and Jubilant Sykes, as well as Jecorey “1200” Arthur, with whom he started the Louisville Orchestra Rap School. Abrams’s work with the Louisville Orchestra has been profiled on CBS Sunday Morning, NPR, The Wall Street Journal, PBS’ Articulate, and PBS NewsHour.

Highlights of the 2022-2023 season include guest conducting engagements with the Cincinnati, Kansas City, Utah, Colorado, and Pacific Symphonies, a return to conduct the Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg, and his debut with the Tiroler Symphonieorchester Innsbruck.

Abrams has been Music Director and Conductor of the Britt Festival Orchestra since 2013, where, in addition to an annual three-week festival of concerts, he has taken the orchestra across the region in the creation of new work – including Michael Gordon’s Natural History, which was premiered on the edge of Crater Lake National Park in partnership with the National Parks Service, and was the subject of the PBS documentary Symphony for Nature; and Pulitzer Prize-winning-composer Caroline Shaw’s Brush, an experiential work written to be performed in Summer 2021 on the Jacksonville Woodlands Trail system.

Abrams recently collaborated with Jim James, vocalist and guitarist for My Morning Jacket, on the song cycle The Order of Nature, which they premiered with the Louisville Orchestra in 2018 and recorded on Decca Gold. They performed the work with the National Symphony Orchestra at the Kennedy Center in 2019. In addition to The Order of Nature, Teddy and the Louisville Orchestra recorded All In in 2017 with vocalist Storm Large. Most recently, he released Space Variations, a collection of three new compositions for Universal Music Group’s 2022 World Sleep Day.

As a guest conductor, Abrams has worked with such distinguished ensembles as the Los Angeles Philharmonic; Chicago, San Francisco, National, Houston, Pacific, Indianapolis, Milwaukee, Vancouver, Colorado, Utah, and Phoenix Symphonies; Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra; and the Sarasota and Florida Orchestras. Internationally, he has worked with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg, and the Malaysian Philharmonic. He served as Assistant Conductor of the Detroit Symphony from 2012 to 2014. From 2008 to 2011, Abrams was the Conducting Fellow and Assistant Conductor of the New World Symphony.