Beyond Louisville, Abrams has conducted the Boston, Chicago, San Francisco, Cincinnati, Houston, Indianapolis, Milwaukee, Vancouver, and Phoenix Symphonies; the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra; the Buffalo and Los Angeles Philharmonics; Carnegie Hall’s NYO2; and the Minnesota, Florida, and Sarasota Orchestras, all in North America, as well as the Helsinki and Luxembourg Philharmonics and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra in Europe. He returns to the Minnesota Orchestra and makes debuts with the Atlanta Symphony, Nashville Symphony, Ottawa’s National Arts Centre Orchestra, and London’s BBC Symphony Orchestra in the 2025-26 season.

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. Highlights of the coming season include the world premiere of Lisa Bielawa’s Violin Concerto, a new LO commission; an all-Hungarian program showcasing Yuja Wang in Ligeti’s Concerto for Piano and Orchestra; a gala concert featuring Itzhak Perlman; new music from the Creators Corps’ fourth season; the continuation of the In Harmony Tour; and performances of Mahler’s epic Ninth Symphony.

Abrams is a prolific and award-winning composer, whose music embraces influences from across the stylistic spectrum. He has written numerous works for the Louisville Orchestra, including 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 the 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. Other recordings of Abrams’s music include his own interpretation of Preludes, his piano collection inspired by Bartók’s Mikrokosmos, which was released by New Amsterdam Records in 2025. Abrams 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. Intended for performance by the LO, the new work draws on the community sessions he holds across the state, for music-making, storytelling, and sharing local history with fellow Kentuckians. 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.

The rap opera is just one of the adventurous collaborations Abrams has initiated with prominent Louisville locals. He and the LO recently joined Jack Harlow for back-to-back performances of the Billboard Music Award-winning rapper’s greatest hits. With Jim James, the vocalist and guitarist for My Morning Jacket, Abrams composed the song cycle The Order of Nature, which they premiered with the LO, reprised with the National Symphony Orchestra at Washington D.C.’s Kennedy Center, and recorded for 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.

In a new, season-long role as the Aspen Institute Arts Program’s 2025-26 Harman/Eisner Artist-in-Residence, Abrams will offer his artistic vision to policy programs, events, leadership activities, and more in Aspen, New York, Washington D.C., and elsewhere. In summer 2023, he 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).

AUGUST 2025