Grammy Award-winning conductor-composer Teddy Abrams is in his 13th season as Music Director of the Louisville Orchestra (LO), where he has been the galvanizing force behind the ensemble’s extraordinary artistic renewal and innovative social impact. In the fall of 2026, he assumes the role of Artistic and Executive Director of California’s Ojai Music Festival, concurrent with his continuing role in Louisville. His first festival will be Ojai’s 81st in June 2027, with mandolinist Chris Thile as Music Director. Abrams was chosen as Musical America’s 2022 Conductor of the Year, and his work has been profiled by CBS Sunday Morning, PBS NewsHour, NPR, The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, and The New York Times, which hails him as a “maestro of the people” who “has embedded himself in his community, breaking the mold of modern conductors.” 

In the 2026–27 season, with the commissioning Los Angeles Philharmonic and soloist Ray Chen, Abrams conducts the world premiere of his own Seasons in America for violin and orchestra, following an appearance with Yuja Wang at the LA Phil Gala. Abrams opens the season on a European tour with Wang and the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, with stops in Slovenia, Italy, Austria, and Switzerland. He leads the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra in two separate programs, debuts with the St. Louis Symphony and Naples Philharmonic, and returns to the San Francisco Symphony and National Symphony Orchestra. Abrams also conducts both the Juilliard Orchestra and Curtis Symphony Orchestra, reflecting his commitment to music education and mentorship. 

The rapidly expanding list of North American ensembles Abrams has conducted also include the Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Cincinnati, Houston, Indianapolis, Milwaukee, Nashville, Phoenix, San Diego, Utah, and Vancouver Symphonies, the Buffalo Philharmonic, Carnegie Hall’s NYO2; and the Minnesota, Florida, Sarasota, and Ottawa National Arts Centre Orchestras. 

In Europe, Abrams has led the BBC Symphony Orchestra, Royal Scottish National Orchestra, and Helsinki and Luxembourg Philharmonics, as well as the Festival Orchestra of the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival.  

As Musical America observes, “Abrams has put Louisville firmly on the musical map.” Among his manifold achievements in Kentucky are the Louisville Orchestra Creators Corps, a trailblazing initiative that provides a fully funded residency for three composers who receive local housing, a salary, health benefits, and dedicated workspaces, and the In Harmony Tour, a multi-season, grand-scale community-building project funded by the Commonwealth of Kentucky. Taking the orchestra to all corners of the state for concerts and special community events, this statewide tour has featured performances with Grammy winners Michael Cleveland & Flamekeeper, violinist Tessa Lark, and mandolin virtuoso Chris Thile. In 2026, Abrams and the LO released a new live album on the Pentatone label titled The Year of Silence, comprising the LO-commissioned title composition by Christopher Cerrone with singer-narrator Dashon Burton, and Andrew Norman’s piano fantasy Split, performed by dedicatee Jeffrey Kahane. Louisville season highlights for 2026–27 include a reprise of Abrams’s own Seasons in America for violin and orchestra with soloist Ray Chen; a full orchestra version – newly commissioned by the LO – of Julia Wolfe’s Pulitzer Prize-winning oratorio Anthracite Fields; the world premiere of Timo Andres’s eagerly anticipated New Symphony, the composer’s first contribution to the genre; world premieres from the LO Creators Corps; Verdi’s Requiem; and Strauss’s Salome, in a semi-staged concert performance in collaboration with Kentucky Opera. 

A prolific and award-winning composer, Abrams’s music embraces influences from across the stylistic spectrum. His numerous works composed specifically for the LO include Mammoth, premiered with Yo-Yo Ma and Davóne Tines at Kentucky’s Mammoth Cave National Park; Unified Field, a ballet presented with the Louisville Ballet; a fanfare for then-Prince Charles, to commemorate the future king’s visit to Louisville; and a piano concerto for Yuja Wang, which they recorded for The American Project, the Deutsche Grammophon album that won the pianist and himself a Grammy Award. Abrams served as both composer and performer on Preludes, his piano collection inspired by Bartók’s Mikrokosmos, which was released by New Amsterdam Records in 2025. He is currently working on an orchestral representation of Kentucky’s history and culture as part of his Emerson Collective Fellowship, which recognizes his contributions to building local community through music. He is also at work on ALI, a new Broadway musical about boxing legend and activist Muhammad Ali. Abrams first began exploring Ali’s life and legacy in 2016, and the LO premiered his rap opera, The Greatest: Muhammad Ali, the following year. The all-star cast featured Rhiannon Giddens, Jubilant Sykes, and activist-musician Jecorey “1200” Arthur, now one of Louisville’s Metro councilmen, with whom Abrams went on to found the Louisville Orchestra Rap School. 

During the 2025–26 season, Abrams served in a new, season-long role as the Aspen Institute Arts Program’s Harman/Eisner Artist-in-Residence, offering his artistic vision to policy programs, events, leadership activities, and more in Aspen, New York, Washington D.C., and elsewhere.  

In summer 2023, Abrams concluded his decade-long tenure as Music Director and Conductor of Oregon’s Britt Festival Orchestra. As well as helming its annual three-week festival of concerts, he led the orchestra on tour in the Pacific Northwest with new works including Pulitzer Prize-winner Caroline Shaw’s experiential Brush, written for their summer 2021 performances on the Jacksonville Woodlands Trail system; and Michael Gordon’s Natural History. Their world premiere performance of Gordon’s work, presented in partnership with the National Park Service at the edge of Crater Lake National Park, was the subject of the PBS documentary Symphony for Nature.  

Abrams previously served as Assistant Conductor of the Detroit Symphony (2012–14), as Resident Conductor of Hungary’s MAV Symphony Orchestra (2011–12), and as Conducting Fellow and Assistant Conductor of Miami’s New World Symphony (2008–11). 

Recent compositional highlights include Mammoth, an immersive theater work inspired by and performed in Kentucky’s Mammoth Cave National Park in 2023 with cellist Yo-Yo Ma, bass-baritone Davóne Tines, and a cast of local musicians. Other recent works include a piano concerto written for Abrams’s frequent collaborator Yuja Wang, with which he and the Louisville Orchestra made their Deutsche Grammophon debuts on the virtuoso pianist’s Grammy award-winning March 2023 release, The American Project; and Space Variations, a collection of three new pieces for Universal Music Group’s 2022 World Sleep Day. Abrams is now at work on ALI, a new Broadway musical about boxing legend and activist Muhammad Ali, which premieres in Chicago in spring 2025 before opening on Broadway in the 2025-26 season. Abrams first began exploring Ali’s life and legacy in 2016, and the LO premiered his rap opera, The Greatest: Muhammad Ali, the following year. The all-star cast featured Rhiannon Giddens, Jubilant Sykes, and activist-musician Jecorey “1200” Arthur, now one of Louisville’s Metro councilmen, with whom Abrams went on to found the Louisville Orchestra Rap School. 

The rap opera is just one of the adventurous collaborations Abrams has initiated in Louisville, in addition to the “In Harmony" tour and Creators Corps. With Jim James, vocalist and guitarist for My Morning Jacket, he composed the song cycle The Order of Nature, which they premiered with the Louisville Orchestra and reprised with the National Symphony Orchestra at Washington D.C.’s Kennedy Center before recording it on Decca Gold. Similarly, with singer-songwriter Storm Large, Abrams and the LO recorded All In, a celebration of American music by Cole Porter, Aaron Copland, and Abrams and Large themselves, also for release on Decca Gold. 

Abrams and the LO are the recipients of a one-of-a-kind, sculptural conductor’s rail and podium from Ireland’s Joseph Walsh Studio. Completed in September 2023, the ash stage-piece was created expressly for Abrams and the orchestra and is used during all of their performances together. 

In summer 2023, Abrams concluded his decade-long tenure as Music Director and Conductor of Oregon’s Britt Festival Orchestra. As well as helming its annual three-week festival of concerts, he led the orchestra on tour in the Pacific Northwest with new works including Pulitzer Prize-winner Caroline Shaw’s experiential Brush, written for their summer 2021 performances on the Jacksonville Woodlands Trail system; and Michael Gordon’s Natural History. Their world premiere performance of Gordon’s work, presented in partnership with the National Park Service at the edge of Crater Lake National Park, was the subject of the PBS documentary Symphony for Nature. 

Abrams served as Assistant Conductor of the Detroit Symphony (2012–14), as Resident Conductor of Hungary’s MAV Symphony Orchestra (2011-2012), and as Conducting Fellow and Assistant Conductor of the New World Symphony (2008–11).