Music Celebration of Mammoth Cave tomorrow
MAMMOTH CAVE, KY – Mammoth Cave National Park will host a day of children’s activities and special ranger-led presentations celebrating the musical collaboration between the Louisville Orchestra and Mammoth Cave National Park at the park’s outdoor amphitheater on Saturday, April 29. The events will take place between 9 a.m. and 2:00 p.m. CDT.
The first ranger-led program, entitled “Awakening the Echoes,” will begin at 11:30 a.m. and will explore over two centuries of musical performances inside Mammoth Cave. The second program will take place at 1:00 pm and bring together park rangers, singers with the Louisville Chamber Choir, and the musical director of the Louisville Orchestra, Teddy Abrams. The group will discuss Abrams’s inspiration for his recently completed musical piece entitled MAMMOTH, and present two short musical selections from the program.
“We are so happy to have made a connection between Mammoth Cave National Park and the Louisville Orchestra,” said Superintendent Barclay Trimble. “Our teams have worked closely to connect the natural and cultural history of the park through a very special musical experience that will take place inside the cave. Music is a very important part of our park’s history, and we are looking forward to sharing this collaboration with our communities.”
Mammoth Cave National Park and the Louisville Orchestra have been working together over the last year and a half to plan for two musical presentations of MAMMOTH inside Mammoth Cave on April 29. A ticket lottery was held in February with an overwhelming public response of ticket applications. All spaces for the event were quickly filled. The park still wanted to provide an opportunity for the public to learn about the inspiration behind Abram’s musical piece, and the Louisville Orchestra generously agreed to join us for these special public presentations.
The Louisville Orchestra is also filming a behind-the-scenes look at the planning, development, and execution of the two cave performances. They will produce a documentary about the project for release at a later date. A portion of this documentary will be shown at the amphitheater before and after the 1:00 p.m. discussion.
Children’s activities will be conducted by the Mammoth Cave Environmental Education program and Louisville Orchestra’s Education Outreach and will begin at 9 a.m. They will focus on our personal connections with music through a “Power of Song” activity where they will draw and color music from the Ballad of Floyd Collins. Kids will also get to experience a “Musical Instrument Petting Zoo” with various instruments for them to explore.
All amphitheater events are free and open to the public. Parking is limited and will only be permitted inside the Mammoth Cave Campground. Once the campground is full, no additional parking will be available. The park expects roadways and parking lots around the visitor center area to be congested on Saturday, and parking will be controlled and directed by the park service.
All cave tours will be suspended on the day of the performances to allow for the park staff to assist with the musical event. The campground will also be closed on Friday, April 28 and Saturday, April 29 to provide additional parking options for people attending the amphitheater events. Flint Ridge Road will be closed from the intersection with Mammoth Entrance Road and Great Onyx Road on Saturday. All park trails and riverways will remain open.
For more information on this event or other park information, please call 270–758–2180
Mammoth Cave National Park
Mammoth Cave National Park encompasses 52,830 acres in south central Kentucky, commemorating the diverse geological, biological and historical features associated with the longest cave in the world. Learn more about the park at www.nps.gov/maca, and on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.
The Louisville Orchestra
Established in 1937 through the combined efforts of Louisville mayor Charles Farnsley and conductor Robert Whitney, the Louisville Orchestra is a cornerstone of the Louisville arts community. With the launch of First Edition Recordings in 1947, it became the first American orchestra to own a recording label. Six years later it received a Rockefeller grant of $500,000 to commission, record, and premiere music by living composers, thereby earning a place on the international circuit. In 2001, the Louisville Orchestra received the Leonard Bernstein Award for Excellence in Educational Programming, presented annually to a North American orchestra. Continuing its commitment to new music, the Louisville Orchestra has earned 19 ASCAP awards for Adventurous Programming of Contemporary Music and was also awarded large grants from the Aaron Copland Fund for Music and the National Endowment for the Arts, both for the purpose of producing, manufacturing and marketing its historic First Edition Recordings collections. Over the years, the orchestra has performed for prestigious events at the White House, Kennedy Center, Carnegie Hall, and on tour in Mexico City, and their last two albums for the Decca Gold label, All In (2017) and The Order of Nature (2019) – the latter launched with an appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon – both topped the Billboard Classical and Crossover charts. The feature-length, Gramophone Award-winning documentary Music Makes a City (2010) chronicles the Louisville Orchestra’s founding years, and in spring 2018, Teddy Abrams and the orchestra were profiled on the popular television program CBS Sunday Morning.
