The Louisville Orchestra welcomes guest conductor Ryan McAdams to the Kentucky Center this weekend, and a familiar face from the wind section will also take the spotlight. McAdams will lead the Orchestra in Friday’s performance, which includes Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Scheherezade,” inspired by the classic tales of “1001 Arabian Nights,” and the Louisville premiere of Osvaldo Golijov’s “Sidereus,” a nine-minute overture commissioned by a consortium of 35 orchestras.McAdams is the recipient of the first Sir Georg Solti Emerging Conductor award and the former music director of the New York Youth Symphony. Recent engagements include work with the Israel Philarmonic, New York City Opera, Aspen Music Festival and the Juilliard FOCUS! Festival. He conducted Elliott Carter's 103rd Birthday Celebration at New York's 92Y, featuring Fred Sherry and Nicholas Phan, an event named one of 2011's best classical music events by the New York Times. This is McAdams' debut with the Louisville Orchestra.As the Louisville Orchestra’s principal clarinetist for eight seasons, this isn’t Andrea Levine's first solo in Whitney Hall. But on Friday evening, Levine will move out in front of her fellow Louisville Orchestra performers as a featured soloist, playing German Romantic composer Carl Maria von Weber’s “Clarinet Concerto No. 1 in F Minor.”Levine joins horn player Jon Gustley (November's Britten Serenade program) as a featured soloist to come from inside the Orchestra’s ranks this season, an opportunity often reserved for visiting performers. “It’s using different parts of your brain and different parts of your training. So it’s challenging, it’s tough but fun,” said Levine in an interview with Daniel Gilliam at our sister station, WUOL. “This concerto has really grown on me since I’ve been working on it for the Orchestra. I love coaching the piece, I’ve never actually performed it with an orchestra," she added. "It’s one of my favorites, it’s right up there.”Friday's performance begins at 8 p.m. in the Kentucky Center's Whitney Hall.
