This sponsored article is part of a paid partnership with the Curtis Institute of Music.
Teddy Abrams exudes warmth and ardor. His clean-shaven face, halo of brown curls, and light, bespectacled eyes suggest a youthfulness that eclipses his 37 years and more than two decades of professional experience. But it’s not just his image – it’s his energy. In the past decade as the music director of the Louisville Orchestra (LO), Abrams has approached his role as both an artistic leader and a community representative. Joining the ensemble in the aftermath of bankruptcy and a strike, Abrams canvassed – literally – to aid in the restoration of the orchestra’s image.
“A lot of what I did was more like a politician,” he told me in our recent Zoom interview, “just showing up and meeting people, listening to their stories, shaking their hands, inviting them personally to the orchestra, and running a kind of campaign for years until we had regained that confidence.”
Part of that restoration is a return to the LO’s founding ethos as a place where new music and living composers could thrive. You see it in the orchestra’s programming, and in the repertoire that Abrams conducts; this past weekend, he was joined by violinist Ray Chen for the Barber violin concerto, the only canonical piece on a program that featured the Midwest premiere of Valerie Coleman’s Concerto for Orchestra (an LO co-commission) and works by the LO’s 2024-25 Creators Corps composers Baldwin Giang, Brittany J. Green, and Oswald Huỳnh.
In December, Abrams and Chen will reunite at their alma mater, the Curtis Institute of Music, for a program dominated by Curtis alumni. In addition to the Barber violin concerto, Abrams will lead the Curtis Symphony Orchestra in performances of TJ Cole’s Death of the Poet and George Walker’s Pulitzer-Prize winning Lilacs for Voice and Orchestra, closing out with the Third Symphony by Aaron Copland – a mentor to another Curtis alum, Leonard Bernstein.
Teddy Abrams — Photo by O’Neil Arnold
The concert is less of a return and more a continuation of the relationships Abrams built while he was a student at Curtis. He has collaborated with several Curtis alums in the past year and half. In January, he joined bassist Nate Farrington and percussionist Gabriel Globus-Hoenich for Nate’s World, a concert of improvisatory fire and stylistic eclecticism. And his collaboration with pianist Yuja Wang on The American Project won the 2024 GRAMMY for Best Classical Instrumental Solo.
“We don’t necessarily make music the same way or see music the same way, but these folks and I have such a deep relationship to musical values that we have remained regular collaborators and very close friends since [our time at Curtis]… I work with these folks every year, multiple times a year, and that continues because we forged a deep bond for what we care about – not just because we like playing music together, but why we play music together.”
This drive to dig deeper than artistic goals is a guiding principle of his work with the Louisville Orchestra. In many ways, Abrams is a return to an aspect of music directorship that has become outmoded: speaking directly to audiences – not only from the stage, but in all layers of life. This sense of civic responsibility has precedents set not only by Bernstein, but also by Abrams’ own mentor, Michael Tilson Thomas.
“I was so lucky to have him as a model growing up,” he shared. “That was just an incredible stroke of fortune that I grew up in San Francisco when he was the music director of the San Francisco Symphony, because that’s what I thought all music directors did. He has this communication with audiences that is both verbal and musical, and he’s extraordinary at both. That’s how I’ve tried to model my own work: to use every available resource that we have within ourselves to bring people to the music and give them a sense of ownership and relationship to the organizations that we run.”
Abrams’ fierce devotion to this purpose was also reflected in his work with Yuja Wang on The American Project. For him, the album was a way to tell Louisvillians – the world – that this midsized city on the Ohio River has something significant to contribute.
“This album was an opportunity to say look, the best in the world, people like Yuja Wang, labels like Deutsche Grammophon, the great classical label, want to come work with us,” he told me. “Yes, we’re trying to make a great album and make great music – but I have a second mission: I want people in Louisville to see that and go, ‘we are heard, we are seen, we feel valued.’ That’s a thing that an orchestra can do for a community. It’s not musical exactly, but it’s very important civic work.”
The LO’s Education & Community Partnerships team is the biggest department on staff. Their investment in programs like The R.A.P. School – a partnership with Hip-Hop N2 Learning (HHN2L); their Creators Corps residency; MakingMUSIC school program; and the orchestra’s state-wide In Harmony Tour are a unique approach for an American orchestra, a fact that brings an edge to Abrams’ normally optimistic voice.
“One of the things that really frustrates me is, there are a lot of big institutions that go on and on about all their community programs. Then, you look at the budgets and you talk to the people who run those programs, and they all feel like they’re strapped for attention, they’re strapped for budget, they don’t get the resources that they need… so we’re trying to put our money where our mouth is when we say that we value that. We’re putting the money there, we’re applying for the grants, and really having the staff and the resources to execute these things effectively. This is a thorn in the industry’s side – there’s too much lip service to this stuff.”
Teddy Abrams — Photo by Lauren Desberg
In classical music, technical mastery is often conflated as artistic achievement, but Abrams has a more holistic view of an orchestra’s duty. He asks his collaborators to give their all regardless of venue or location, whether it’s Carnegie Hall or a school auditorium in Harlan, Kentucky. And as someone who programs new music as naturally as breathing, he expects musicians to make time to learn the music – to really sit with a work and explore its facets, a luxury that is usually only afforded to canonical works.
Through it all, Abrams still looks to the advice of one of his Curtis professors as a beacon. “I have to give a huge shoutout to Dr. Ford Lallerstedt, who is one of the most amazing teachers there and set this idea for me, of looking for creativity as the most important thing in an artistic life,” he said. “He inspired so many people in our network to seek something beyond the expectations and to value something that is going to be the most musically fulfilling thing in your life, because you’re looking for that deeper sense of the creative impulse.”
I CARE IF YOU LISTEN is an editorially-independent program of the American Composers Forum, and is made possible thanks to generous donor and institutional support. Opinions expressed are solely those of the author and may not represent the views of ICIYL or ACF.
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