In 2025-26, Teddy Abrams embarks on his twelfth season as Music Director of the Louisville Orchestra (LO), opening with two weeks devoted to the In Harmony Tour in September (Sep 11–13, 18–20). Abrams also conducts six LO Classics Series programs throughout the season. Highlights include the return of Yuja Wang performing Ligeti’s sole Piano Concerto and Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 (Nov 21, 22); Abrams leading Mahler’s Ninth Symphony (Jan 16, 17); and the world premiere of former Creators Corps member Lisa Bielawa’s LO-commissioned Violin Concerto, written for soloist Tessa Lark, on a program with works by current Creators Corps members Anthony R. Green and Chelsea Komschlies and Beethoven’s “Pastoral” Symphony (Oct 24, 25).
Says Abrams:
"The LO puts a strong emphasis on creative playing. People come to the Louisville Orchestra because they want to be a part of our aesthetic. It involves extraordinary risk taking, with interpretations that don’t necessarily fit into a mold and don’t just follow traditions. We allow the musicians to be super expressive – that’s one of our biggest values – we want them to feel that they have individual voices. There’s also a certain vibrancy to the way we play because of the different venues we’re constantly visiting; our musicians know how to play anywhere at the highest caliber."
For full season details, visit louisvilleorchestra.org.
As a guest conductor, Abrams makes four debuts: with Ottawa’s National Arts Centre Orchestra, where a fall performance of Mozart, Shostakovich, and Caroline Shaw (Nov 12, 13) is followed by a spring performance featuring music of Mozart, Korngold, Barber, and Samy Moussa (May 6, 7); with the Atlanta Symphony, where he conducts a program of Copland, Bernstein, Artie Shaw, and Valerie Coleman (Feb 12, 14); with the Nashville Symphony, another co-commissioner for Bates’s Silicon Hymnal, which Abrams reprises along with Mahler’s “Titan” Symphony (May 29–31); and with the BBC Symphony, where he conducts the world premiere of Mohican/Munsee-Lenape composer Brent Michael Davids’s Requiem for America: Singing for the Invisible People (May 17). Abrams also returns to the Minnesota Orchestra to conduct music of his mentor, Michael Tilson Thomas, as well as works by Copland, Bernstein, and Timo Andres (Dec 31, Jan 1).
Abrams’s incumbency as the Aspen Institute’s Harman/Eisner 2025–26 Artist in Residence began this past summer at the Aspen Ideas Festival and continues throughout the year. The year-long residency sees the conductor offering his artistic vision to various policy programs, events, leadership activities, and more, in Aspen, New York, Washington, DC and elsewhere. Drawing upon the Institute’s long-established convening power and association with ideas, values and leadership, Artists in Residence engage in discussions as thought leaders rooted in the arts.