Teddy Abrams, Leonidas Kavakos & George Li
New Music Friday: Fresh Releases from Teddy Abrams, Leonidas Kavakos, Nelson Freire, and George Li
Conductor, composer, and Music Director of the Louisville Orchestra Teddy Abrams collaborated with Jim James, the lead singer and songwriter of My Morning Jacket, to create The Order of Nature on Decca Gold. The work is a song cycle for orchestra inspired by nature with a message of peace and love. It was recorded during a performance of the piece at the Louisville Orchestra’s annual Festival of American Music on April 7th, 2018.
Teddy Abrams and Jim James will appear on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon on Monday, October 21. More information is available at theorderofnature.com and the short documentary series about the making of the album is on YouTube.
Violinist Leonidas Kavakos‘ first album as a Sony Classical artist is a recording of Beethoven’s Violin Concerto Op.61 and Septet Op.20 which he plays and conducts with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra. Kavakos will also be joined by frequent recital partner Enrico Pace on piano for Beethoven Variations on Folk Songs.
Nelson Freire celebrates his 75th birthday a very personal selection of works he has performed across a lifetime at the piano. Encores, on Decca, features 30 tracks ranging from Purcell to Rachmaninov, Scarlatti to Shostakovich and twelve of Grieg’s Lyric pieces, the album also includes such treasures as the Sgambati Mélodie de Gluck, the Paderewski Nocturne and Albeniz’s Navarra.
George Li plays Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No.1 with Vasily Petrenko and the London Philharmonic Orchestra, as well as a selection of Liszt solo piano works, on his new album on Warner Classics. The New York Times has called his Tchaikovsky performance a “real revelation.”