Teddy Abrams & The Louisville Orchestra Release 'The Year Of Silence'

The Louisville Orchestra with Music Director Teddy Abrams, Dashon Burton, and Jeffrey Kahane will release The Year of Silence, featuring commissioned works by Christopher Cerrone and Andrew Norman.

Cerrone's The Year of Silence is inspired by Kevin Brockmeier's short story about a city that mysteriously falls silent, a text the composer first encountered in 2010 but only returned to during the early months of the pandemic. What once felt like a self-contained, almost mythic narrative suddenly seemed prophetic, as Cerrone wandered the unusually quiet streets of Brooklyn and rediscovered the story amid the stillness and uncertainty of that time. Choosing to preserve as much of the text as possible, Cerrone shapes the work around a narrator who moves between speech and song – written with Burton's voice in mind – while the orchestra evokes a world where silence is not emptiness but a warm, enveloping presence. Under Abrams' direction, the Louisville Orchestra brings this sound world to life through unconventional textures and gestures.

In contrast, Split – composed by Norman and performed by Kahane – offers a sharply kinetic counterpoint, its restless energy exploring fragmentation and duality.

"Writing topical and relevant music is very challenging. Many attempts, no matter how well-intentioned, fail in superficiality or obsolescence. The two compositions on this album succeed because fundamentally they are exceptional, engaging, cohesive works of art aside from their social commentary. The works' allegories are subtextual and aesthetic.

Indeed, the genius of Andrew Norman and Christopher Cerrone is that they have intuited, absorbed, and expressed the nature of life today in a manner that leaves the audience with a part to play. We aren't told what or how to think by these two composers, but are instead offered musical simulacra for our confounding modern world, with glimpses of regeneration and reconstitution that would be wise to consider." - Teddy Abrams

The album will be released on 26 June. 

Track List

Christopher Cerrone (b. 1984)
The Year of Silence
1) Shortly after two in the afternoon
2) He put the pill bottle back
3) There was another silence
4) Who was the first person
5) The silence was plain and rich and deep
6) Shortly after nine a.m.
7) The cryptographer’s theory
8) Every day the silence receded

Andrew Norman (b. 1979)
9) Split*