Music Director Teddy Abrams and the Louisville Orchestra.
In Friday’s (8/25) New York Times, Javier C. Hernández writes, “On a muggy July night at an amphitheater in suburban Kentucky, the conductor and composer Teddy Abrams—sporting black jeans, camouflage sneakers and a bouncy mop of golden curls—took the podium and began to evangelize. It was the final stop on the Louisville Orchestra’s summer tour across Kentucky, and Abrams, the ensemble’s 36-year-old music director, paused to speak to the crowd of roughly 900 in Bardstown, 40 miles or so south of Louisville … He told the audience—teenagers in tie-dye, retirees snacking on nachos and workers from nearby Bourbon distilleries among them—that he wanted to use music to ‘bring people together across all backgrounds…. This is your Louisville Orchestra, everyone…. We’ve made a lot of the music that the world loves, invented entire genres right here in our state. That’s what this is all about—sharing the incredible music-making that takes places in Kentucky.’ During his nine years at the helm of the Louisville Orchestra, Abrams has helped the 86-year-old ensemble emerge from a period of turmoil to reclaim its reputation as one of the most innovative in the United States … on an ambitious project to make the orchestra part of daily life for Kentuckians.”
