orKIDStra Yum! Family Series

Saturday, January 24, 2009
11:00 AM - Brown Theatre

Jason Weinberger, Associate Conductor

Does the whole family need a little lift? Jazz up your January with the orchestral debut of the Louisville Leopard Percussionists.  Featured all over Louisville and on HBO, these young percussionists play jazz standards and original compositions.  This concert marks the first true collaboration with the Louisville Orchestra, with orchestral arrangements being commissioned just for the occasion.  If you thought they were hot stuff before, come hear what they sound like with a brass section and more!

The Louisville Leopard Percussionists are a performing ensemble of approximately 45 student musicians, ages 7-12, living in and around Louisville, Kentucky. Each student learns and acquires proficiency on several instruments, such as marimbas, xylophone, vibraphone, drum set, timbales, congas, bongos and piano.

Award-winning elementary school teacher Diane Downs started her first percussion ensemble, The Fabulous Leopard Percussionists, as a volunteer activity after she found some old instruments in a storage closet in the school where she taught in Louisville.

No one anticipated the levels of excitement and satisfaction that would be generated for the children, nor the extraordinary emotional impact that the group would have on audiences through local, regional, national and international music performances.

After ten years as artistic director of the Fabulous Leopard Percussionists, Diane Downs began to explore how she might make the Leopard Percussionist experience available to children throughout the Metro Louisville community.

In the fall of 2003, The Louisville Leopard Percussionists launched as a freestanding community 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, committed to providing the exciting and enriching Leopard Percussionist experience to all children in the Louisville community. Participation in the ensemble has always been and will always be offered regardless of cultural or socioeconomic background.

Our mission is to provide a comprehensive musical experience for children that enriches lives and builds community.

Our vision is for participants of diverse backgrounds develop music appreciation, performance skills, proficiency on a variety of percussion instruments, and learn to improvise, compose, and teach music, and to care for their instruments. These skills build creativity and self-confidence and teach life-long values of personal discipline, cooperation, leadership, responsibility, and community.

Visit the Louisville Leopard Percussionists website.