Louisville Orchestra

The Louisville Orchestra is the primary orchestra in Louisville, Kentucky and has been called the cornerstone of the Louisville arts scene. It was founded in 1937 by Robert Whitney (1904–1986) and Charles Farnsley, Mayor of Louisville. The Louisville Orchestra employs 71 full-time musicians, and offers a wide variety of concert series to the community, including classical programs featuring international guest artists, pops performances, and education and family concerts. Previously known as the Louisville Philharmonic Society, the orchestra is the resident performing group for the Louisville Ballet and the Kentucky Opera, and present several concerts across the Kentucky/Indiana area.
The orchestra performs its classical concerts at Whitney Hall, a large concert hall inside The Kentucky Center. Pop concerts with guest stars are performed at The Louisville Palace. Other programs are presented at The Brown Theatre.
Among other things, the orchestra is internationally recognized for its performance of contemporary music by emerging classical composers.
The Louisville Orchestra has performed for many prestigious events including "A Festival for the Arts" at the White House, the Inter-American Music Festival at the Kennedy Center, "Great Orchestras of the World" at Carnegie Hall, and toured Mexico City. In 2001, the Louisville Orchestra received the Leonard Bernstein Award for Excellence in Educational Programming, presend annually by ASCAP and the American Symphony Orchestra League to one orchestra in North America. The Louisville Orchestra has earned nineteen ASCAP awards 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 digitizing the master tapes and restoring the music scores for archiving the Orchestra's historic First Editions Recordings collections. Some of the recordings were re-released on CD by Santa Fe Music on the First Edition Music label. Unfortunately, the majority of the grant monies were used for this purpose instead of the grants' stated objectives. The Louisville Orchestra filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on December 3, 2010.
==Music Directors of the Louisville Orchestra==
*Robert Whitney (1937–1967)
*Jorge Mester (1967–1979)
*Akira Endo (1980–1982)
*Lawrence Leighton Smith (1983–1994)
*Max Bragado-Darman (1994–1998)
*Uriel Segal (1998–2004)
*Raymond Leppard served as Artistic Advisor (2004–2006)
*Jorge Mester (2006–present)
==See also==
* List of symphony orchestras
== References ==
==External links==
*Official site
*Louisville Orchestra Musicians Association Website
===Listening===
*Art of the States: Louisville Orchestra eight performances by the orchestra
Category:Musical groups established in 1937
Category:Arts organizations in Louisville, Kentucky
Category:American orchestras
Category:Musical groups from Louisville, Kentucky
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fr:Louisville Orchestra
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