Teddy Abrams, at the piano, performs with musicians of the Louisville Orchestra, where he is music director.
On Friday’s (10/27) PBS News Hour, Jeffrey Brown profiles Teddy Abrams, music director of the Louisville Orchestra: “A young conductor in Louisville, Kentucky, is expanding the [classical-music] playbook. He’s combining music-making with public service and orchestrating community in every corner of the city and state. At Happy Top Park in the Appalachian Mountains of Eastern Kentucky, for an appreciative local audience of several hundred, members of the Louisville Orchestra played George Gershwin’s ‘Rhapsody in Blue.’ A short time later, mandolinist extraordinaire Chris Thile offered up a bit of what he called ‘rhapsody in bluegrass.’ The connector here, in all senses of the word, is Teddy Abrams, part-time pianist, full-time music director and conductor of the Louisville Orchestra … Abrams: ‘It’s our responsibility to find the places where other parts of the population are comfortable, where we can be on their turf, we can be guests in their town or their community center or their school … and forge that relationship’ … Brown: ‘Many nights, you will find him conducting the standard repertoire in Louisville’s Whitney Hall, a traditional performing art space…. But you’re just as likely to find him at … a Louisville church at a meeting of the Kentucky Refugees Ministry, this group mostly Congolese.’ ”
