LOCC Throughout the Commonwealth
After three weeks with some of the most bitter cold Louisville has experienced in decades, I feel relieved to finally be able to walk my dog, walk to and from my car without fear of slipping on ice, and return to a more-or-less reliable school schedule for my daughter! We at the LO are getting ready for a whirlwind Spring (I’m always amused at how closely our season’s cycles mirror the academic cycles I’ve been accustomed to) - our creators, Chelsea and Anthony, have had their noses to the grindstone working on several major pieces that we’ll premiere in the coming months.
In February, though, our sights are set on the upcoming In Harmony Tour, which features two LOCC (/adjacent) works on the program: Brittany J. Green’s TESTIFY! and a reprise of Chelsea’s Shaker Hymn Medley. We will perform these pieces and others (including quite a few Russian works, interestingly!) in Berea on Feb. 25, Frankfort on Feb. 26, and Danville on Feb. 27. This is an important period for the tour, as this leg coincides with the 2026 Regular Session of the Kentucky General Assembly, where the state will decide how much funding they will allocate for the tour over the next two years.
Our goal with LOCC has always been to integrate our creators and their music into every type of programming we do. Since LOCC's first year, we’ve invited creators to compose new works for the In Harmony Tour. To me, these have been some of the most meaningful and surprising projects our creators have undertaken, as they encourage thinking beyond Louisville and exploring what connecting with Kentucky more broadly can mean. In 2023, Lisa Bielawa and Tyler Taylor used this opportunity to engage with specific people, regions, and musical traditions: Lisa traveled to Eastern Kentucky and built a close relationship with singer-songwriter Lindsey Branson. Together, they co-wrote Home, which features Branson and traditional musicians alongside the orchestra—and it has since become the unofficial “anthem” of the In Harmony Tour. Tyler visited communities in central and southern Kentucky, and his work In Memory’s Safe (featuring Lisa as soprano soloist) includes three songs by people from those areas and reflects on how combining different musical traditions and styles—rather than specific songs—shaped their musical connections.
In 2024, both Alex Berko and Tanner Porter drew inspiration from Kentucky’s traditional music and filtered it through their own musical languages. In Unstrung, Alex sought to create a “deconstructed bluegrass” by focusing on the strings and bluegrass’s key techniques: plucking, strumming, chopping, and others. He explored this approach even more deeply in his Double Concerto, written later that year. Meanwhile, Tanner was inspired by the open tuning of the mountain dulcimer to reconnect with the cello—her primary instrument of many years, but one that had, according to her, been “gathering dust.” Tuning the instrument to the dulcimer’s open tuning, she instantly felt a rush of reconnection and renewal, which she captured in Back At It.
Baldwin Giang and Oswald Huỳnh took a different approach in 2025, using their tour pieces to experiment musically and explore how facets of their identities dialogue with being (temporarily, at least) Kentuckians. Baldwin wrote PIPA BOY III - “encounters between past and future” as the latest in his series of works exploring hybrid identities. Baldwin composed the piece for himself as the pipa soloist alongside the LO, linking the pipa - a traditional Chinese lute - to the string instruments common in Kentucky’s traditional music. Oswald’s re: cleaving, meanwhile, responds to Li-Young Lee's poem "The Cleaving” to express the tension of wanting to both embrace and detach from the label of “Asian American.” And finally, Anthony and Chelsea have written extensively about their tour pieces for this year, which I encourage you to read here and here if you haven’t already!
The In Harmony tour is one of the most meaningful projects we undertake at the LO, connecting with Kentuckians across the full range of geographic, social, and economic backgrounds. Including new works by our LOCC composers - written specifically for this tour and for Kentucky - contributes to our state’s musically bountiful history and broadens our creators’ roles beyond Louisville to encompass the entire state. Our collection of new works created for the tour showcases the endless ways Kentucky can inspire our composers, and it always excites me to see that recognition and connection when we perform these pieces for our audience.
- Jacob Gotlib, Creator Corps Program Manager