Teddy Abrams, Music Director

Teddy Abrams, Music Director

Music Director

Teddy Abrams, Musical America’s 2022 Conductor of the Year, is in his tenth season as Music Director of the Louisville Orchestra (LO), where he has been the galvanizing force behind the orchestra’s artistic renewal since his appointment in September 2014.

Abrams and the LO begin their 2023-24 season with the next leg of their multi-season “In Harmony” state tour. After a summer debut at the Hollywood Bowl with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and a return to Ravinia with the Chicago Symphony, Abrams’s guest conducting highlights include Helsinki and Buffalo Philharmonic debuts and a return to the Utah Symphony.

In April 2023 Abrams premiered his own composition Mammoth with the LO in Kentucky’s Mammoth Cave. Other recent compositional highlights include a piano concerto for Yuja Wang, and Abrams is now at work on ALI, a musical about Muhammad Ali premiering in fall 2024 in Louisville, the boxer’s birthplace, before opening on Broadway in spring 2025.

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Bob Bernhardt

Bob Bernhardt

Principal Pops Conductor

Celebrating his 35th consecutive season with the Louisville Orchestra, and his 20th Anniversary as Principal Pops Conductor,
Bob Bernhardt continues to bring his unique combination of easy style, infectious enthusiasm and wonderful musicianship to the city and orchestra he loves. He accepted the post of LO Assistant Conductor in 1981 and has worked with the Louisville Orchestra in every season since.

He is concurrently Principal Pops Conductor of the Chattanooga Symphony and Opera, where he previously spent 19 seasons as Music Director, and now is in his 24th year with the company. He is also Principal Pops Conductor of the Grand Rapids Symphony in Michigan, and Artist-in-Residence at Lee University in Cleveland, TN.

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