Teddy Abrams and Louisville Orchestra’s 2026-27: new works by Abrams and Timo Andres, orchestral setting of Julia Wolfe’s Anthracite Fields, Creators Corps premieres, Verdi’s Requiem and Strauss’s Salome, much more

Teddy Abrams conducts Louisville Orchestra (photo: courtesy of Louisville Orchestra)

(March 2026) — Music Director Teddy Abrams and the Louisville Orchestra (LO) – which during his tenure has won praise as “one of the most innovative in the United States” (The New York Times) – are thrilled to announce the lineup for their 2026–27 season. Following unprecedented growth over the past several years, including record subscription and single-ticket sales that exceeded pre-pandemic levels, the coming season’s highlights include an ambitious slate of new works: a full orchestra version – newly commissioned by LO – of Julia Wolfe’s Pulitzer Prize-winning oratorio Anthracite Fields (Jan 16); Timo Andres’s eagerly anticipated First Symphony (April 23 & 24); the Louisville premiere of Seasons in America for violin and orchestra by Abrams himself, featuring violinist Ray Chen (Feb 26 & 27); and world premieres by current and former Louisville Orchestra Creators Corps composers Susanna Hancock (April 23 & 24), Seare Ahmad Farhat (March 5 & 6), Chelsea Komschlies (Jan 16), and KiMani Bridges (Feb 26 & 27). Other highlights of the season include Verdi’s Requiem (Oct 16 & 17); a Latin jazz reimagining of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue featuring New York-based Cuban pianist Ahmed Alom (April 23 & 24); Strauss’s Salome, in a semi-staged concert performance in collaboration with Kentucky Opera (May 7 & 8); guest conductors Earl Lee, Peter Oundjian, and Mélisse Brunet; and much more. At the same time, the LO continues its mission of serving as a civic and cultural resource with free performances, which – as an indicator of the organization’s stellar commitment to community engagement – serve more audience members each year than paid performances do.

Abrams, who will be embarking on his thirteenth season with the orchestra, elaborates:

“The Louisville Orchestra’s 2026-27 season reflects the extraordinary energy of our musicians, the passion of our audiences, and the strength of our community. Our Orchestra has reached a level of national prominence for our creative programming and artistry, and our new season will show off our capabilities in every way – from virtuosity to sublime beauty, with massive collaborations and intimate, life-changing moments. This is the most daring, exciting, dramatic season we’ve programmed since I arrived!”

LO’s Interim Executive Director, Nathaniel Koch, adds:

“People are seeking real, shared experiences. This season reflects who we are as an organization: confident, growing, and deeply connected to our city. We are investing in artistic excellence, expanding access points, and continuing to serve more of our community through free events and educational programming than ever before. Louisville is showing up for this orchestra, and we’re meeting that enthusiasm head-on.”

Classics and Coffee Series highlights

The season’s Classics Series programming is bookended by large-scale vocal works: Abrams conducts both Verdi’s Requiem (Oct 16 & 17) and Strauss’s Salome, the latter in a semi-staged concert performance in collaboration with Kentucky Opera (May 7 & 8). Both performances will be directed by Ben Robinson, Kentucky Opera’s General Director and CEO.

Early in the new year, Abrams and the LO present another major vocal work: Julia Wolfe’s Pulitzer Prize-winning oratorio, Anthracite Fields, which the LO commissioned the composer to expand from its original setting to be performed by full orchestra. Wolfe grew up in a small town in Pennsylvania, and when she was commissioned by the Mendelssohn Chorus of Philadelphia to write a new work for choir and the Bang on a Can All-Stars – of which she is also co-founder and co-artistic director – she turned to the coal-mining areas not far from her childhood home. The text is culled from oral histories and interviews, local rhymes, a coal advertisement, geological descriptions, a mining accident index, contemporary everyday activities that make use of coal power, and an impassioned political speech by John L. Lewis, the head of the United Mine Workers Union. To perform the new setting of Wolfe’s piece, Abrams and the orchestra will be joined by the Louisville Chamber Choir and Cardinal Singers. The program is completed by music of Copland, Ruggles, Schubert, the late American singer-songwriter Jean Ruth Ritchie, and a world premiere by 2025-26 Creators Corps composer Chelsea Komschlies (Jan 16).

Abrams won a 2024 Grammy Award for his and the LO’s collaboration with pianist Yuja Wang on her album The American Project. The Deutsche Grammophon album showcased Abrams’s Piano Concerto, composed for Wang in 2022 and recorded live with the LO at the Kentucky Center for the Performing Arts. The composer and pianist have been close friends and collaborators since they were classmates at Philadelphia’s Curtis Institute of Music, and this season features Abrams as a composer again in collaboration with another Curtis alum, when violinist Ray Chen plays the Louisville premiere of Abrams’s Seasons in America for violin and orchestra. A co-commission with the LA Phil, the work will be heard in Louisville after a fall premiere in Los Angeles. Also on that program is a world premiere by former Creators Corps composer KiMani Bridges, along with Brahms’s Symphony No. 4 (Feb 26 & 27).

This past New Year’s Eve, Abrams guest-conducted the Minnesota Orchestra and pianist Aaron Diehl in Timo Andres’s new piano concerto, titled Made of Tunes. The same composer’s new symphony – his first contribution to the genre – will be given its world premiere by the Louisville Orchestra in April 2027 under Abrams’s baton, sharing the bill with a Latin jazz-inspired reimagining of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue featuring New York-based Cuban pianist Ahmed Alom, and another world premiere, composed by incoming Creators Corps composer Susanna Hancock (April 23 & 24). Hancock’s fellow 2026-27 Creators Corps composer, Seare Ahmad Farhat, will also have a work given its world premiere this season, on a program with Mahler’s “Titan” Symphony and Piazzolla’s Four Seasons of Buenos Aires featuring violinist Kerson Leong, led by guest conductor Peter Oundjian (March 5 & 6).

In addition to Oundjian, other guest conductors for the 2026–27 Classics Series include Earl Lee, who leads timpanist Chris Choi in Michael Daugherty’s Raise the Roof for timpani and orchestra, as well as Sibelius’s Symphony No. 2 and music of Franck (Jan 29 & 30); and Mélisse Brunet, who leads pianist Stewart Goodyear in a two-concert odyssey encompassing all five of Beethoven’s Piano Concertos (April 2 & 3).

With the exception of the January performance of Julia Wolfe’s Anthracite Fields, each of the Classics Series performances will be paired with a concert the previous day in the orchestra’s popular Coffee Series, which presents shorter, intermission-free versions of Classics performances with complimentary coffee.

Louisville Orchestra Creators Corps

The Louisville Orchestra Creators Corps (LOCC) program, launched in the 2022-23 season, is the only program of its kind that deeply integrates artists into the orchestra and the city. Each year, the selected Creators move to Louisville’s Shelby Park neighborhood for the entirety of the concert season, serving as full-time LO staff members, receiving an annual salary, health insurance, housing, and custom studio workspaces and becoming immersed in the fabric of city life. The new Creators Corps members in the 2026–27 season, Susanna Hancock and Seare Ahmad Farhat, will both have world premieres of new works presented in the 2026-27 season’s Classics and Coffee Series concerts.

Susanna Hancock composes music shaped by the tension between the organic and the algorithmic, exploring color, process, and acoustic phenomena. Often inspired by the natural world, her work traces inner and outer landscapes through influences such as minimalism, spectralism, math rock, and electronica to create sound worlds with both atmosphere and architecture. Her music has drawn attention for the clarity and intensity of its musical language, shaped by stark contrasts and gradual transformation, with a special sensitivity to rhythm and timbre. Described as “arresting” (Cleveland Classical) and “unlocking a kind of religious ecstasy” (National Sawdust Log), her work is frequently programmed throughout the United States and has been presented on four continents. Susanna’s work has been performed by musicians including the United States Army Band (“Pershing’s Own”), wildUp, Metropolis Ensemble, Matchstick Percussion, ~Nois Saxophone Quartet, Unheard-of Ensemble, cellist Nick Photinos, and members of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, and St. Louis Symphony. She has received recognition from organizations including ASCAP, the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, The Johnstone Fund, and United States Artists, and her work has been featured at international festivals and events including the LA Phil’s Noon to Midnight Festival, Ear Taxi Festival, and the Bang on a Can Marathon. Susanna holds a Master of Music in Theory & Composition degree from New York University and Bachelor of Music in Acoustic & Electronic Composition and Bassoon Performance degrees from the University of South Florida. Her primary teachers include Julia Wolfe, Michael Gordon, and Baljinder Sekhon. She currently lives in Cincinnati with her husband, composer and new-music broadcaster Tyler Kline, and their cat Tofu. Outside of music, she is a practicing ceramicist, avid plant person, and perpetually curious about new foods and places.

Composer Seare Ahmad Farhat draws inspiration from myriad sources: poetry, mathematics, his Afghan heritage, and Medieval music. He is particularly interested in the ways language and historical texts, with their invitations, subversions, and histories, can serve as points of artistic departure. Seare has received commissions from the JACK and FLUX Quartets, Longleash Ensemble, Cayuga Chamber Orchestra, Moscow New Music Ensemble, and Byrne-Kozar Duo among others. Seare has also held residencies at Avaloch Farm Music Institute, Banff Evolution: String Quartet, the Gabriela Lena Frank Creative Academy of Music as a Balhest Eeble Composer Fellow (Cycle 13), and served as the young composer-in-residence of the Detroit Chamber Winds and Strings in 2019. He has also received prestigious awards such as the Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and a BMI Composer Award. Seare holds a B.M. in Composition and B.A. in Mathematics from Oberlin College and Conservatory, an M.M. from Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, where he held the position of Assistant Director of the New Music Ensemble, and is a D.M.A. candidate at Cornell University. His mentors have included Elizabeth Ogonek, Kevin Ernste, Aaron Travers, Stephen Hartke, and Jesse Jones. Alongside his work as a composer, Seare performs as a vocalist, is a Program and Support Administrator with the Gabriela Lena Frank Creative Academy of Music, and enjoys hiking and camping on weekends off.

Ticket and Subscription Information

Subscriptions for the Classics, Classics Mini A & B, Coffee, and Pops series are now available at LouisvilleOrchestra.org.

For more information, please contact Mallory Kramer, Director of Marketing, at [email protected].

About the Louisville Orchestra

The Louisville Orchestra was created in 1937 and sprang up in a time of need, just after the Ohio River Great Flood and in the wake of the Great Depression. Robert Whitney was invited to conduct the newly established orchestra, then known as the Louisville Philharmonic, and arrived from Chicago that same year. In forming the ensemble, the goal was to create a new model for the American symphony orchestra, as it was conceived through an ambitious effort that emphasized innovation through the commissioning, performance, and recording of new works by contemporary composers. The Louisville Orchestra garnered international critical acclaim, became the first orchestra to establish a record label, and cemented a place in history for its contributions to contemporary classical music. In its first two decades, the Louisville Orchestra commissioned/recorded up to 52 new works annually and ultimately created 150 vinyl recordings (LPs) of more than 450 works. The Louisville Orchestra continues to be recognized as a cornerstone of the Louisville performing arts community. Music Director Teddy Abrams has helmed the Louisville Orchestra since 2014, and the Louisville Orchestra has returned to its origins of commissioning new music and recording, having released two albums under the prestigious Decca Gold label, and winning a 2024 Grammy Award for “Best Classical Instrumental Solo” for The American Project on Deutsche Grammophon, featuring the conductor’s own Piano Concerto with its dedicatee and Abrams’s longtime friend and collaborator, Yuja Wang, as soloist. A wide variety of immersive and innovative concert performances and educational programming continue to receive national attention, including the Louisville Orchestra Creators Corps, a trailblazing initiative that provides a fully funded residency for three composers who receive local housing, a salary, health benefits and dedicated workspaces; the “In Harmony” tour, a multi-season community-building project on a giant scale funded by the Commonwealth of Kentucky – which has currently allocated $4.3 million through 2026 – that takes the orchestra to every corner of the state for concerts and special community events; and the performance of Abrams’s composition Mammoth, an immersive theater work inspired by and performed in Kentucky’s Mammoth Cave National Park in 2023 with cellist Yo-Yo Ma, bass-baritone Davóne Tines, and a cast of local musicians. Recent press coverage includes a feature story on PBS NewsHour and articles and mentions in The New Yorker, The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Rolling Stone, Pitchfork, and on CBS Sunday Morning. Accolades include three invitations to perform at Carnegie Hall; the Leonard Bernstein Award for Excellence in Educational Programming; the League of American Orchestras 2019 Ford Musician Awards for Excellence in Community Service; and 19 American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP) awards for adventurous programming in use of contemporary music.

Louisville Orchestra 2026–27 Classics and Coffee Series season

All performances take place in Whitney Hall at the Kentucky Center for the Performing Arts

Oct 16 & 17
Louisville, KY
Teddy Abrams, conductor
Ben Robinson, director
VERDI: Requiem

Jan 16
Louisville, KY
Teddy Abrams, conductor
Louisville Chamber Choir and Cardinal Singers
Music by COPLAND, RUGGLES, SCHUBERT, RITCHIE
Julia WOLFE: Anthracite Fields (LO commission)
Chelsea KOMSCHLIES: world premiere

Jan 29 & 30
Louisville, KY
Earl Lee, conductor
Chris Choi, timpani
FRANCK: TBA
Michael DAUGHERTY: Raise the Roof
SIBELIUS: Symphony No 2

Feb 26 & 27
Louisville, KY
Teddy Abrams, conductor
Ray Chen, violin
KiMani BRIDGES: World premiere
Teddy ABRAMS: Seasons in America (world premiere)
BRAHMS: Symphony No. 4

March 5 & 6
Louisville, KY
Peter Oundjian, conductor
Kerson Leong, violin
Seare Ahmad FARHAT: World premiere (LO Creators Corps composer)
PIAZZOLLA: Four Seasons of Buenos Aires
MAHLER: Symphony No. 1 “Titan”

April 2 & 3
Louisville, KY
Mélisse Brunet, conductor
Stewart Goodyear, piano
BEETHOVEN: Piano Concertos Nos. 1–5 over two performances

April 23 & 24
Louisville, KY
Teddy Abrams, conductor
Ahmed Alom, piano
Susanna HANCOCK: World premiere (LO Creators Corps composer)
GERSHWIN: Rhapsody in Blue
Timo ANDRES: New symphony

May 7 & 8
Louisville, KY
Teddy Abrams, conductor
Ben Robinson, director; Kentucky Opera
STRAUSS: Salome