Thursday October 16, 2025
Local Connection
Weather
Traffic
@LouisvilleDispatch
@LouisvilleDisp
Subscribe
The Louisville Orchestra Family Series is back by popular demand and the first concert of the series is a seasonal favorite, Halloween Spooktacular! On Saturday, October 20 at 11AM, Bob Bernhardt will lead families on a musical adventure filled with our favorite Halloween musical tricks and treats at the Brown Theatre.
Kiddos can dress in their Halloween best and be prepared for the chills and trills that await – such as the popular costume parade! Princesses and superheroes can bring their moms and dads early for thematic pre-concert activities that start at 10AM in the Brown Theatre lobby.
General admission tickets are $15* and available by calling 502.584.7777 or by visiting LouisvilleOrchestra.org.
LO Family Series ticket packages are still available and make the most out of your musical dollars! Get three Family Series concerts for the lowest possible prices: Adult packages are $41* and child packages are $21*. Call the LO Patron Services team at 502.587.8681 to take advantage of the best prices. Learn more about the benefits of subscribing at LouisvilleOrchestra.org.
Designed for children ages 3-10 years old, these one-hour concerts entertain and educate the young, and the young at heart!
2018-2019 LO Family Series
- 10/20/2018 – Halloween Spooktacular!
- 11/24/2018 – Home For The Holidays
- 3/16/2019 – Carnival Of The Animals
Teddy Abrams and the Louisville Orchestra announce the third annual Festival of American Music at The Kentucky Center, beginning with Kentucky Classics on Saturday, March 24 (8PM). This concert features music inspired by the bluegrass state and homegrown songwriters. The second program of the Festival of American Music, Play, will be performed on Friday, April 6 (11AM) and Saturday, April 7 (8PM) at The Kentucky Center and explores some of the most potent voices in contemporary American composition; Julia Wolfe, Michael Gordon, and Jim James.
Individual tickets range from $27 – $85 and are available by calling 502.584.7777 or by visiting LouisvilleOrchestra.org.
Kentucky Classics (March 24) will celebrate American roots, emphasizing Kentucky-centered music and local musicians such as singer-songwriter Joan Shelley, a Louisville native whose “crystal-clear voice meditates on the spaces between people, in arrangements that evoke Bacharach and African blues influences as much as acid-folk” (UK Independent). Another Louisville native and singer-songwriter, Tyrone Cotton, will perform in a unique style influenced by his classical guitar studies at Western Kentucky University and a period of jazz immersion in Boston. Neo-folk singer and harpist Lizzie No, “an exceptionally talented artist with a gift for making an age-old music sound fresh and relevant again” (Americana UK), will make her Louisville Orchestra debut. And Michael Cleveland, the International Bluegrass Music Association’s most awarded fiddler, returns with his band Flamekeeper after their LO debut on March 10. The program is bookended with New Piece for Orchestra by Edgar Meyer and Four Dance Episodes from Aaron Copland’s ballet Rodeo.
When putting this program together, Louisville Orchestra’s Music Director, Teddy Abrams said:
“Our 2018 Festival of American Music celebrates music that was quite literally ‘grown’ and nurtured here in our country: a kind of music from the very earth of this nation. The first program features a range of modern soloists who derive inspiration and continue traditions from Kentucky’s folk and Americana genres. Ultimately these different solo sets lead to a special performance of Copland’s Rodeo.”
The second program, Play (April 6+7), further broadens the perspective to include a wider range of contemporary American composers. Pulitzer Prize-winner Julia Wolfe’s riSE and fLY will be performed with percussion soloist Gabriel Globus-Hoenich, who was also featured on Abrams’s Muhammad Ali: The Greatest this past fall. Natural History by Michael Gordon was commissioned for the 2016 National Parks Service Centennial, and premiered at the Britt Festival under Teddy Abrams’s leadership on sacred land in Oregon. Natural History explores the spiritual connection between the land and the traditions of the Klamath tribe. The Louisville performance will feature the Steiger Butte Singers and Drummers, a Native American drumming ensemble who participated in the premiere and both a new recording on the Cantaloupe label and the documentary Symphony for Nature from Owsley Brown Presents, currently airing on PBS stations across the country. Play is rounded out with music by special guest artist Jim James, founding front-man of famed Louisville alt-rock band My Morning Jacket. He joins the orchestra for the world premiere performance of a song cycle written in collaboration with Abrams.
Teddy Abrams elaborated:
“The second week of our Festival showcases some of the great creative forces in American music today. Julia Wolfe’s riSE and fLY is a percussion concerto inspired by New York street beats and the rhythm of the American work song. Michael Gordon’s Natural History is an enormous-scale composition that I commissioned at the Britt Festival to be performed with over 150 musicians on the very edge of Crater Lake National Park, and his work is intimately constructed around a group of musicians from Oregon’s Klamath Tribe – for whom Crater Lake is a sacred place. Finally, Louisville’s world-renowned Jim James and I have been co-writing a song cycle which will be premiered at this show. His music is very special to me – he combines a beautiful insight into the world around us with a great and readily apparent human spirit.”
On Saturday, March 10, Music Director, Teddy Abrams and the Louisville Orchestra bring award winning bluegrass fiddler, Michael Cleveland, and his band Flamekeeper to the LO Pops at The Kentucky Center. Along with Michael Cleveland + Flamekeeper hits like “Lonesome Desert” (featured on Cleveland’s most recent solo album Fiddler’s Dream), and the band’s unique take on Julian Lennon’s hit “Too Late for Goodbyes,” Teddy Abrams has also included two dance episodes of Aaron Copland’s Rodeo and Jeremy Kittel’s Pando in the mix.
Tickets for Michael Cleveland + Flamekeeper with the LO Pops range from $27 – $85 and are available by calling 502.584.7777 or online at LouisvilleOrchestra.org.
Michael Cleveland + Flamekeeper make their debut with orchestra. Their hard-driving traditional bluegrass is joins the orchestra in a concert that promises to be an amazing evening of music. Michael Cleveland grew up in Henderson, Indiana, and calls Southern Indiana his home. Now only in his mid-30s, Cleveland is one of the most acclaimed bluegrass fiddle player in the world!
On Friday, February 23 and Saturday, February 24, the Louisville Orchestra welcomes nationally acclaimed conductor, Thomas Wilkins, to Whitney Hall to lead one of Gustav Holst’s most popular symphonic works – The Planets. This presentation will include HD images from NASA projected on a big screen over the stage. Experience this symphonic powerhouse with stunning images, from the Mars Rover mission and past probe missions Magellan, Voyager, and Galileo. Single tickets range from $27 – $85 and are available by calling 502.584.7777 or visit LouisvilleOrchestra.org.
Created by filmmaker Duncan Copp and produced by The Houston Symphony in cooperation with NASA and Jet Propulsion Laboratories, The Planets: An HD Odyssey is a spectacular presentation of the latest images from modern space exploration projected in high definition on a giant screen over the stage, providing a stunning visual canvas as your Louisville Orchestra performs Gustav Holst’s glorious musical score.
“The images in the movie, produced and directed by Duncan Copp, were often astonishing. Photographs from rovers and satellites, radar images and computer-generated graphics were combined to give the audience the impression of circling individual planets and sometimes flying over their awesomely barren landscapes…There is, of course, a film-score-like quality to the music, and combining it with imagery has been done before, though not to my mind with such sophistication.” – The New York Times
Thomas Wilkins is currently the Music Director of the Omaha Symphony, the Principal Conductor of the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra, and the Germeshausen Family and Youth Concert Conductor Chair with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Learn more about Maestro Wilkins at http://www.kaylormanagement.com/Wilkins_Thomas_bio.html.
PROGRAM: Hilliard Lyons Coffee Concert: Friday, February 23, 2018 11AM
Brown-Forman Classics Concert: Saturday, February 24, 2018 8PM
The Kentucky Center, Whitney Hall Thomas Wilkins, Conductor | Kent Hatteberg, Choursmaster | Women of the University of Louisville Collegiate Chorale
+ CLAUDE DEBUSSY:: Nocturnes
JAMES BECKEL:: Toccata for Orchestra
GUSTAV HOLST:: The Planets
+ Saturday evening performance only
Due to the high demand by school groups, there is limited seating for Friday morning’s Coffee concert.
Opus 3 Artists is the exclusive representative for “The Planets: An HD Odyssey.”
In October of 2016 Teddy Abrams went to an art exhibit at the 1619 Flux Gallery. The sole artist in the exhibit “Displaced Narratives” was Vian Sora, a visual artist from Bagdad who now resides in Louisville. That is where the idea for War + Peace germinated.
I started thinking,” said Abrams, “that many Americans likely don’t know many people if any) from Iraq, which is surprising considering how important the relationship between these countries has been for the past almost two decades. And if someone did happen to know someone from Iraq, the chances they shared an intimate conversation about the war is likely minimal. As an artist, Vian is continually exploring that area and opening up the door to have that conversation.”
On Friday, February 2 at 11AM and Saturday, February 3 at 8PM Teddy Abrams and the Louisville Orchestra tackle themes of heroism, lost companions, and even life and death in the dramatic and moving program War + Peace. Composer Sebastian Chang collaborates with Iraqi artist Vian Sora to create the new work Between Heaven + Earth based on Ms. Sora’s artwork and personal experiences.
Single tickets start at $27 and are available by calling 502.584.7777 or by visiting LouisvilleOrchestra.org.
“Music is one of the most powerful languages we have,” said Abrams. “And because subjects like war and displacement make people uncomfortable, I feel s particularly important that we take it on from a musical perspective. Wars (as dreadful and horrifying as they are) often produce some of the most interesting periods in artistic history. ”
Abrams will elaborate on the musical inspirations of war through thematic works including a selection from Prokofiev’s opera, War + Peace (based on Tolstoy’s novel), and Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings which was not initially about war, but has developed this association through its usage in films like Platoon.
“Think about pieces like Ravel’s La Valse,” suggests Abrams, “an interpretation of what happened in Europe after World War I, or the musical shift in American culture after the Civil War. These often created new paradigms for art and the ways different cultures interacted with each other.”
The highlight of the two concerts will be the world premiere of Between Heaven + Earth by Sebastian Chang and inspired by visual artist Vian Sora whose artwork stems from her life in war-torn Bagdad. Abrams says:
“This is the piece that’s going to bind the whole concert together. As great as these perspectives are from the past, it’s our contemporary perspective on what it means now to still be in a situation where there’s conflict around the world with no end in sight”
Louisville Orchestra Education Director, Deanna Hoying, recently had a conversation with Abrams, Chang and Sora about the collaboration where Sora, the ‘war-artist from Iraq,’ said:
“A lot of the work I do deals with the concept of life and death, but also the living in between. There’s a lot of spiritual narrative in my work and Sebastian and I had a lot of conversations about that. We found that we had a lot of complimentary ideas about the subject to the point. That became the main realization for me as I was working on this project. In some of the pieces that Sebastian references in the music, I was dealing with the concept of displacement and escaping war into a more peaceful situation. You always think about that concept that you could lose your life so where would you end up? In my case I always thought about the afterlife – what would it be like – so I created these massive paintings about that concept. There’s an uncertainty of death and life, but also there’s that feeling that you could be in heaven, you could be in a paradise setting, still, there can be something very dangerous that can happen. So I wanted to focus on the dichotomy of those two concepts which fit with Sebastian’s music as well. The titles in Sebastian’s music come directly from the titles of my paintings.”
In that conversation, Hoying asked composer Sebastian Chang what he wants the audience to take away from his new work Between Heaven + Earth. He replied:
“(I would like) for people to consider the nature of their own views and the role that plays in justifying violence against people in the world. For Vian, she’s one of the people who made it out – she got lucky. She’s told me stories. All it takes is a piece of metal flying at three times the speed of sound and it hits you in the aorta and you’re gone. It’s really easy to take life with these weapons nowadays. This is not X-box 360 – this is real life.”
Read Deanna Hoying’s entire interview with Teddy Abrams, Sebastian Chang, and Vian Sora HERE.
Photo: Harry Potter In Concert
The Harry Potter Film Concert Series, presented by the Louisville Orchestra, returns to the Kentucky Center with Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban in Concert, the third film in the Harry Potter series. On Saturday, July 7, 2018, at 7:30 pm and Sunday, July 8, 2018, at 3:00 pm, the Louisville Orchestra will perform this magical score live from Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban™ while the entire film plays in high-definition on a 40-foot screen.
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban – Film Synopsis In their third year at Hogwarts, Harry, Ron, and Hermione meet escaped prisoner Sirius Black, learn to handle a half-horse/half-eagle Hippogriff, repel shape-shifting Boggarts, and master the art of Divination. Harry must also withstand soul-sucking Dementors, outsmart a dangerous werewolf and deal with the truth about Sirius and his relationship to Harry and his parents.
Earning an Oscar® nomination for the score, John Williams composed the spellbinding and masterful music that has become a celebrated classic; conjuring beautiful, soaring motifs that continue the adventures of Harry Potter and his friends on their magical journey.
CineConcerts CineConcerts and Warner Bros. Consumer Products announced the Harry Potter Film Concert Series, a new global concert tour celebrating the Harry Potter films, in 2016. Since the world premiere of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone – In Concert in June 2016, more than half-amillion fans have enjoyed this magical experience from J.K. Rowling’s Wizarding World, which is scheduled to include over 600 performances across more than 38 countries worldwide through 2018.
Justin Freer, President of CineConcerts and the Producer/Conductor of the Harry Potter Film Concert Series, explains, “The Harry Potter film series is a once-in-a-lifetime cultural phenomenon that continues to delight millions of fans around the world. It is with great pleasure that we bring fans for the first time ever an opportunity to experience the award-winning music scores played live by a symphony orchestra, all while the beloved film is simultaneously projected onto the big screen. This is truly an unforgettable event.”
Brady Beaubien of CineConcerts and Concert Producer for the Harry Potter Film Concert Series, explains, “Harry Potter is synonymous with excitement around the world and we hope that by performing this incredible music with the full movie, audiences will enjoy returning to the Wizarding World.”
Tickets go on sale FRI 19 JAN at 10:00 am – Online at LouisvilleOrchestra.org and KentuckyCenter.org; by phone at 502.584.7777; in person at the Kentucky Center drive-thru and ticket office at 501 W. Main, Louisville 40202. Tickets: adults $35 – $95; children 12 and under $25 (all seats).
For more information on the Harry Potter Film Concert Series, please visit www.harrypotterinconcert.com. For more information about this performance, please visit www.LouisvilleOrchestra.org.
On Saturday, October 21at 8PM, the world’s greatest party band comes to the Kentucky Center to perform with YOUR Louisville Orchestra! Principal Pops Conductor, Bob Bernhardt leads the LO with original members of The B-52s (Fred Schneider, Kate Pierson, and Cindy Wilson) performing fun and campy dance music like their mega-hits: “Love Shack,” “Roam,” “Rock Lobster” and “Deadbeat Club.”
When asked about performing with a symphony orchestra, Kate Pierson said: “When the Pops meets the ‘Bs’ there will be a musical, symphonic, ecstatic explosion of sound – but really the arrangements by David Campbell are really mind blowing and they add to the songs in a most spectacular way.”
Tickets for the B-52s with The LO Pops range from $87 – $27 and are available by calling 502.584.7777 or online at LouisvilleOrchestra.org.
For the best prices, pro-rated discounted Pops subscriptions are also still available by calling 502.587.8681 or online at LouisvilleOrchestra.org.
This concert is made possible by the generous support of LG+E and Fifth Third Bank.
