Biography
Conductor
Teddy Abrams
TEDDY ABRAMS is Music Director of the Louisville Orchestra, where he has fostered interdisciplinary collaborations across the city, including as leader of Louisville’s cultural response to the pandemic with the Lift Up Lou initiative. In Louisville, he led the world premieres of his own piano concerto written for Yuja Wang, as well as a concerto for timba band and orchestra by Dafnis Prieto. He collaborated with Jim James, vocalist and guitarist for My Morning Jacket, on the song cycle The Order of Nature, which they premiered and recorded with the Louisville Orchestra in 2018. His rap-opera, The Greatest: Muhammad Ali, premiered in 2017, with a cast that included Rhiannon Giddens and Jubilant Sykes, as well as Jecorey “1200” Arthur, with whom he started the Louisville Orchestra Rap School. Mr. Abrams has been profiled on CBS Sunday Morning, NPR, The Wall Street Journal, and PBS’ Articulate and NewsHour, and he was named Musical America’s 2022 Conductor of the Year.
Mr. Abrams is also Music Director and Conductor of the Britt Festival Orchestra, where, in addition to an annual three- week festival of concerts, he has taken the orchestra across the region in the creation of new work—including Michael Gordon’s Natural History, which was premiered on the edge of Crater Lake National Park in partnership with the National Parks Service, and was the subject of the PBS documentary Symphony for Nature; and Caroline Shaw’s Brush, an experiential work written to be performed on the Jacksonville Woodlands Trail system.
As a guest conductor, Mr. Abrams has worked with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony, National Symphony, Houston Symphony, and Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, among others. Internationally, he has worked with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg, and the Malaysian Philharmonic. He served as Assistant Conductor of the Detroit Symphony from 2012–14 and was a conducting fellow and assistant conductor of the New World Symphony. He made his SF Symphony conducting debut in 2012.
Mr. Abrams is also Music Director and Conductor of the Britt Festival Orchestra, where, in addition to an annual three- week festival of concerts, he has taken the orchestra across the region in the creation of new work—including Michael Gordon’s Natural History, which was premiered on the edge of Crater Lake National Park in partnership with the National Parks Service, and was the subject of the PBS documentary Symphony for Nature; and Caroline Shaw’s Brush, an experiential work written to be performed on the Jacksonville Woodlands Trail system.
As a guest conductor, Mr. Abrams has worked with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony, National Symphony, Houston Symphony, and Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, among others. Internationally, he has worked with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg, and the Malaysian Philharmonic. He served as Assistant Conductor of the Detroit Symphony from 2012–14 and was a conducting fellow and assistant conductor of the New World Symphony. He made his SF Symphony conducting debut in 2012.
