“New music has become a strong part of the Louisville Orchestra’s seasons under the baton of Teddy Abrams over the past few years—taking a thread from the orchestra’s illustrious history of recording new music via its label First Edition Records founded in 1950,” writes Elizabeth Kramer in Wednesday’s (3/30) Courier-Journal (Louisville, KY). “This season, the orchestra’s Festival of American Music concerts put an even stronger emphasis on work by contemporary composers. Abrams conducts the festival’s final concert [April 9] with works by renowned composers John Adams (the first movement of ‘Harmonielehre’) and Aaron Copland (Symphony No. 3) and music by younger composers. It also hosts composer Mason Bates, 29, known for composing symphonic music and as a DJ of electronic dance music, who is performing his 2011 work Mothership with the orchestra…. Bates wrote Mothership through a commission for the YouTube Symphony Orchestra, which included musicians from around the world.” Says Bates of Mothership, “Because it incorporates electronica, it’s kind of like a gateway drug for orchestras. They get to work with electronic sounds. We think of the orchestra as a set entity, but it has always evolved.”
Posted March 30, 2016
