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When the Louisville Orchestra contacted me several years ago about joining its artistic staff I was immediately interested for two very specific reasons – the orchestra’s historic, city-wide music education program and its legendary series of commissions and world premiere performances, recordings and broadcasts during the middle part of the twentieth century. That latter aspect of the LO’s history is revisited in a new documentary, Music Makes A City, about the civic leaders and musicians who placed the creation of new art at the heart of their orchestra’s identity:

If you have any interest in the histories of modernist music, American orchestras, recorded media and/or civic engagement with the arts this film tells a story you should know. The New York Times notes, ‘viewers unfamiliar with artists like Lukas Foss and Gunther Schuller [among many others] will find themselves agreeably challenged and stirred.’ And as the film documents, the Louisville Orchestra at the height of its time as the world’s leading new music ensemble did the same thing for the citizens of Louisville and countless music lovers worldwide.

In the half century that has elapsed since the period documented in Music Makes A City orchestras in this country have essentially abandoned the twin lynchpins of the Louisville Orchestra’s success – the creation of new content and its broad and lasting dissemination through savvy use of media. Regrettably for our entire field, no approaches could possibly be more vital and potentially successful than these in today’s wide-open digital media environment.