| After launching last fall to a chorus of critical acclaim, “LOVE” (Louisville Orchestra Virtual Edition) returns this spring with four new streaming programs, three conducted by galvanizing young Music Director Teddy Abrams and two featuring cross-genre collaborations with Jecorey Arthur and Sarah Jarosz respectively. Like the orchestra’s fall offerings, all four spring programs will stream live from Louisville’s newest venue, Old Forester’s Paristown Hall, and will subsequently be available for on-demand viewing. As Vogue magazine concluded in its recent feature on the orchestra’s season-opening LOVE concert: “In Kentucky, the times are very much a-changing.” Click here to see Abrams and the orchestra perform “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” with special guests Daria Raymore and Jason Clayborn. Teddy Abrams comments: |
| “Our spring season is a further exploration of our commitment to creativity and service in these unsettling and exhausting times. I believe that our work can help our city heal and find joy amidst the darkness, and our programs reflect our dual mission of providing a deeper connection to our world and an escape from the anguish and tragedies of this moment. Despite everything we’re facing, the Louisville Orchestra has never sounded better, and I cannot wait for our musicians to show off their talents in works like John Adams’s Chamber Symphony and Gabriela Lena Frank’s Leyendas. Our longtime mission of bridging musical styles to support a more unified community will be celebrated in two major collaborations: Jecorey Arthur is presenting a journey through Black music, from West African drumming to hip-hop today, and Sarah Jarosz – one of my favorite singers alive! – is performing a world premiere orchestral set that we are building with her. Our work continues with renewed energy because this is what our city deserves.” |
| To kick off the spring season, Abrams and the Louisville Orchestra explore the Classical style through a pair of symphonies, juxtaposing Mozart’s tranquil 39th with Chamber Symphony, a late-20th-century masterpiece by John Adams (livestream Feb 13; on-demand Feb 26–April 11). Next, Abrams and the orchestra investigate the folk traditions of three continents through Bartók’s Romanian Folk Dances, Gabriela Lena Frank’s Leyendas: An Andean Walkabout and a collaboration with three-time Grammy-winning American roots singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Sarah Jarosz, who joins them for the world premiere of orchestral arrangements of her own songs (livestream March 6; on-demand March 19–May 2). For their third and final program together, the Music Director and orchestra celebrate the influence of Black culture, pairing Ravel’s jazz-inflected Piano Concerto in G, which the versatile Abrams will lead from the keyboard, with a survey of seminal Black musical styles led by Louisville rapper Jecorey Arthur (livestream March 27; on-demand April 9–May 23). Recently elected as one of Louisville’s Metro Councilmen, Arthur previously collaborated with the orchestra for an audience of 35,000 at its 2014 Independence Day Waterfront concert and headlined its world premiere performances of Abrams’s grand-scale work The Greatest: Muhammad Ali. To complete the series, the Louisville Orchestra’s Principal Pops Conductor Bob Bernhardt takes the podium for a festive celebration of ragtime, blues and jazz, featuring trumpet virtuoso Byron Stripling, piano soloist Bobby Floyd and percussionist Robert Breithaupt in music by “Jelly Roll” Morton, W.C. Handy and others (livestream April 10; on-demand April 23–June 6). |