Louisville Orchestra
323 West Broadway, Suite 700
Louisville, KY 40202
Phone: (502) 587-8681
Fax: (502) 589-7870
Website: www.louisvilleorchestra.org

“Strategic Initiative grants from the Fund have helped to support the Orchestra’s intensive education program in the Jefferson County Public Schools. This program, which impacts over 18,000 students, teachers, and parents, includes individual classroom visits by musicians and ensemble performances at all 88 elementary schools in the system, curriculum materials for all students and teachers, newsletters, and Making Music concerts at the Louisville Palace.“

A full-time symphony orchestra employing 71 musicians, the Louisville Orchestra offers a wide variety of concert series to the community, ranging from classical to family programs. Programming in the regular season includes the Hilliard Lyons Classics Series, Tafel Motors Coffee Concert Series, Chase Pops Series, BB&T NightLites Series, Yum! Brands OrKIDStra Series, and Elite Homes, Inc. Legends Series; the summer season offers the Fifth Third Bank ROARchestra Series and Summer Classics Series. In addition, the Orchestra performs in several local venues across the Kentucky/Indiana area.

Conductor Robert Whitney and Charles Farnsley, Mayor of Louisville, founded the Louisville Orchestra in 1937. Ten years later, the Orchestra launched First Edition Recordings, becoming the first American orchestra to own a recording label. In the early 1950s, the Orchestra received a Rockefeller grant of $500,000 to commission, record, and premiere twentieth century music by living composers, effectively placing the Louisville Orchestra on the international circuit. Following Whitney’s retirement, successive Music Directors have included Akira Endo, Jorge Mester, and Lawrence Leighton Smith. Uriel Segal was appointed Music Director of the Orchestra in 1998, with Bob Bernhardt serving as Principal Pops Conductor and Robert Franz as Associate Conductor.  Currently the Orchestra is under the direction of Artistic Advisor, Raymond Leppard, and is undergoing a search for a new Music Director. 

In 2001, the Louisville Orchestra received the prestigious Leonard Bernstein Award for Excellence in Educational Programming, presented annually by ASCAP and the American Symphony Orchestra League to one orchestra in North America. Continuing its commitment to the music of our time, the Louisville Orchestra was given its eighteenth ASCAP award for Adventurous Programming of Contemporary Music. Most recently, the Orchestra was awarded large grants from the Aaron Copland Fund for Music and the National Endowment for the Arts, both for the purpose of producing, manufacturing, and marketing the Orchestra’s historic First Edition Recordings collections. Three compact discs of world premiere performances dating from the 1950s have been released, with seventeen more to follow.

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