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The Louisville Orchestra is a major American ensemble known for its adventurous repertoire of contemporary and commissioned music. Also a prolific recording ensemble, the LO released over 140 albums on its own record label between 1955 and the 1990s. The Louisville Philharmonic Society was formed in 1937 by Dann and Mary Byck, and Robert Whitney was appointed as its first conductor. Whitney gradually expanded the size of the orchestra, and by working with some of the top soloists of the time, it became very well-known. However, after ten years of hiring costly, high-profile soloists, it had accumulated a large financial deficit. Upon realizing that a new business plan was needed, in 1948 Whitney worked with Charles Farnsley, the mayor of Louisville, to form a strategy to save the ensemble. Their solution was to make commissioned and new music a top priority, which distinguished it from other American ensembles, and it was renamed the Louisville Orchestra. The re-formed ensemble quickly became known after the 1950 premiere of William Schuman’s dance concerto Judith, featuring Martha Graham. The recording was released by Mercury, and it was so successful that the LO established its own record label, First Edition Records. With the help of a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation, the LO commissioned and recorded more than 450 new works over the next 35 years. The master tapes from this period were digitized in 1999, and then re-released under the First Edition Music label in the 2000s. Since the '80s, the LO has operated as a full-time orchestra and has received several Grammy nominations, and 19 awards from ASCAP for its adventurous programming of contemporary music. It also received the Leonard Bernstein Award for Excellence in Educational Programming in 2021. Conductor Teddy Abrams became its Music Director in 2014 and has proceeded with a balanced program of both contemporary and older music. Under Abrams’ leadership, the LO performed several world premieres, and has collaborated on recordings with artists such as vocalist Storm Large, guitarist Jim James, and pianist Yuja Wang. Regular concert venues include Whitney Hall and Brown Theater in Louisville, and the LO is the resident orchestra for both the Louisville Ballet and the Kentucky Opera. ~ RJ Lambert

Composer, conductor, and instrumentalist (piano, clarinet, and organ) Teddy Abrams was named conductor of the Louisville Orchestra in 2014; he announced an aim to bring broad accessibility to the programming of an ensemble that historically had specialized in difficult contemporary works. At the time, he was the youngest conductor of a major American symphony orchestra.

A native of Berkeley, California, Edward Paul Maxwell Abrams was born on May 6, 1987. He showed talent on the piano starting at age three and also studied clarinet as a child. Then, at nine, he attended a performance by the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Michael Tilson Thomas and developed the ambition to become a conductor. He began studying conducting with Tilson Thomas at 12 and completely bypassed middle school and high school, supplementing his music studies with courses at local community colleges. Abrams graduated from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music with a bachelor's degree at 18 and went on for further conducting studies at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia and at the Aspen Music Festival and School. Abrams quickly found high-profile posts, winning a three-year conducting fellowship with the New World Symphony in Miami Beach in 2011 and then graduating to posts at the MAV Symphony Orchestra in Hungary and the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. In the latter post, he was responsible for the orchestra's community programs, and he brought a strong orientation toward the wider musical community when he came to Louisville. He is also a composer, and the 2017 Louisville Orchestra release All In, on the major Decca label, also featured two Abrams compositions.

Abrams has led the Louisville Orchestra in more than ten premieres of his own works, including Muhammad Ali Portrait, inspired by the city's most famous native son in the sports world. Under his leadership, the orchestra has also collaborated with musicians in the locally vibrant fields of folk (vocalist Aoife O'Donovan) and bluegrass (banjoist Béla Fleck). Abrams himself is also noted as a performer; he has played chamber music with the Sixth Floor Trio and has also performed in klezmer bands. Abrams is the conductor of the Britt Music & Arts Festival Orchestra, which he led in 2016 performances at Crater Lake National Park, and he was featured as a pianist, playing two of his own compositions plus a partially improvised version of Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 30 in E major, Op. 109, in a Tiny Desk Concert on the U.S. National Public Radio network, becoming one of the few classical musicians to have appeared on the streaming video series. Abrams and the Louisville Orchestra returned on Decca in 2019 with the album The Order of Nature, and he also led the Royal Scottish National Orchestra on the Avie label that year, backing violinist Rachel Barton Pine in violin concertos by Dvořák and Khachaturian. In 2023, Abrams and the Louisville Orchestra joined Abrams' Curtis School classmate Yuja Wang on the Deutsche Grammophon label for The American Project, which included a recording of Abrams' jazz- and rock-influenced Piano Concerto. ~ James Manheim