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Louisville Orchestra's New Season Blends Adventurous, Classical Selections

Scene during, the open of the Louisville Orchestra Classics season with Fanfara, and welcoming Teddy Abrams as the new Music Director, at The Kentucky Center in Louisville, KY. Sept. 6, 2014 (by Frankie Steele/Louisville Orchestra)
Photographer: Frankie Steele
Scene during, the open of the Louisville Orchestra Classics season with Fanfara, and welcoming Teddy Abrams as the new Music Director, at The Kentucky Center in Louisville, KY. Sept. 6, 2014 (by Frankie Steele/Louisville Orchestra)

Perhaps the biggest news from the Louisville Orchestra’s new 2017-18 season announcement is that in November, conductor Teddy Abrams will premiere “The Greatest: Muhammad Ali,” a musical celebration and tribute to the Louisville athlete and humanitarian.

This work comes off an eight-minute composition called “Float, Rumble, Rest,” which Abrams recorded with My Morning Jacket frontman and Louisville native Jim James shortly after Ali’s death in June.

This season — the orchestra’s 80th — offers works for both adventurous listeners, as well as those seeking balance in their selections. Other performances throughout the year include:

Why Beethoven?

Oct. 14, 2017

Ludwig van Beethoven: Symphony No. 7

Conducted by Abrams, this is an All-Beethoven concert exploring the mind and heart of a composer whose influence still resounds today.

Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto

Jan. 13, 2018

Jean Sibelius:  Symphony No. 7 (in one movement)
Pytor Tchaikovsky:  Concerto for Violin + Orchestra

War + Peace

Feb. 3, 1018

Samuel Barber:  Adagio for Strings
Maurice Ravel:  La Valse
Ralph Vaughn Williams:  Dona Nobis Pacem 
Claudio Monteverdi:  Madrigals of War and Love (selections)
Gustav Mahler: “Revelge” from Des Knaben Wunderhorn
Charles Ives:  They Are There
Avo Pärt:  Summa
Kurt Weill:  The Ballad of the Soldier’s Wife (Und was bekam des Soldaten Weib)
Arnold Schoenberg:  A Survivor from Warsaw
Sergei Prokofiev:  Waltz from War + Peace

Kentucky Classics: Festival of American Music 1

March 24, 2018

Aaron Copland:  Four Dance Episodes from Rodeo
Michael Cleveland, fiddle and “I’m with Her” trio

Other selections include 2017 Musical America's Artist of the Year, Yuja Wang, performing Rachmaninoff; 2017 Grawemeyer winner Andrew Norman's "Play" as well as Stravinsky's "The Rite of Spring" as a powerful season finale.

But if pop is maybe more your thing, Bob Bernhardt, the orchestra’s principal pops conductor, has you covered with a 50th anniversary celebration of The Beatles' “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” an evening of B52s tributes and the jazz duo Mambo Kings at the LO Pops.

A full schedule of the season is available here.

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