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of a six-week summer orchestral
program sponsored by the Louisville Academy of Music. With Rubin Sher as conductor, William
Sloane as assistant, and the Academy's President, Robert French, as manager, approximately
fifty young musicians began rehearsals at the Academy that September. By December the
fledgling Academy Youth Orchestra had grown to seventy members drawn from seventeen area
schools, and had outgrown the Academy's rehearsal facilities. On the 30th of that month
the group gave its first public concert in the old Columbia Auditorium. Two days earlier
it had made its community debut playing excerpts from Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf in a
taped performance broadcast on WHAS TV. |
Variously known as the Academy Youth
Orchestra, the County Youth Orchestra, the All-County Youth Orchestra, and the
Louisville-Jefferson County Youth Orchestra, it has finally settled on, and restored, its
1960 name of incorporation, the Louisville Youth Orchestra.Over
the years the LYO has also called many places home: the old Academy on York Street, the
Shrine Temple, the Columbia (now Spalding) Auditorium, the old Armory (now Louisville
Gardens), the Louisville Convention Center, Atherton High School, and most recently, the
superb facilities of the Youth Performing Arts Center. It is rare that a youth orchestra
can enjoy such a high-quality rehearsal and performance space. |
Ruben
Sher, the first conductor
of the Louisville Youth
Orchestra |
Melody Welsh (center) and Jim Bates (right)
congratulate Daniel Spurlock following his farewell concert as music director. |
Throughout its history it has known
outstanding Music
Directors: Rubin Sher beginning in 1958, Daniel Spurlock beginning in 1975,
Jim Bates
beginning in 1996, Robert Franz beginning in 2001, and Jason Seber
beginning in 2005. These accomplished directors have led the orchestra through hundreds of
concerts in the community, on tour throughout Kentucky, to the Governor's mansion and the
State Fair on numerous occasions, to Chicago, Pittsburgh, Nashville, Buffalo, Columbus
(IN), and even to the International Festival of Youth Orchestras in Lausanne, Switzerland,
in 1971. They have been the friends and mentors of literally thousands of LYO members. |
| The orchestra has premiered compositions by Nelson Keyes, Gonzalo
Roig, Federico Rojas, David McHugh, Samuel Adler, Peter McHugh, Carol McClure (an alumna
of the LYO), Paul Nahay, Don Knaack, and others. It has responded to the batons of memorable guest
conductors, including Robert Whitney, Karl Haas, Sidney Harth, Jack Herriman, Carlo
Mastropaolo, Akira Endo, Uri Segal, Jorge Mester, and Lawrence Leighton Smith. Guest
artists include Paul Kling, Miriam Fried, Daniel Heifitz, Lee Luvisi, Greg Fulkerson (an
alumnus of the LYO), Leon Rapier, Marion Gibson, Frank Fuge, Leon Bibb, and Peter McHugh. |
Robert Franz
served as Music
Director from 2001through 2005. |
Funding the orchestra has never been easy. In its early years
parents and players raised money annually by operating a lemonade and hot dog stand at the
State Fair. The orchestra received partial support from the Jefferson County Playground
and Recreation Board, and later, the Greater Louisville Fund for the Arts. Today patron
contributions, membership fees, ticket sales, and the Fund all help to keep the
four
orchestras (Serenade, Concert, Repertory, and Symphony), two elementary string
programs, and various ensembles (totaling nearly 300 musicians) busily
making music.
The LYO at the International Festival of Youth Orchestras in Lausanne,
Switzerland, in 1971.
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