Cardinal musicians join cellist Yo-Yo Ma in Mammoth Cave performance

UofL’s School of Music lecturer of voice, Erin Keesy will be among the UofL students, faculty and alumni performing Saturday, April 29, alongside 19-time Grammy Award-winning cellist Yo-Yo Ma at Kentucky’s Mammoth Cave National Park.

The Louisville Chamber Choir and Louisville Orchestra directed by Teddy Abrams will hold two sold-out performances in Mammoth Cave’s Rafinesque Hall. The performances will feature new music composed by Abrams specifically for the event.

“I think it’s going to make a really big impact,” said Keesy, a soloist in the performance. “It truly is a once-in-a-lifetime experience – not to mention performing with Yo-Yo Ma who is not only a famous name in our community, but a famous name in households across America and the world.”

Kent Hatteberg, School of Music director of choral activities, serves as the artistic director of the Louisville Chamber Choir which has created meaningful ties between Louisville’s professional music community and UofL students. For this performance, Keesy is singing with Hatteberg and Won Joo Ahn, UofL’s director of university chorus and women’s chorus.

In discussing how Abrams sourced UofL students, faculty, and alumni for the performance, Keesy says, “It was mostly people who had grown up in Kentucky and had attended, or were attending, the School of Music. We all remembered what it was like to go to Mammoth Cave when we were kids, and so we all had a connection to the caves, a connection to UofL and a connection to Louisville Chamber Choir.”

The performance in Mammoth Cave will immerse audiences in the sounds of the cave’s acoustics and the rough nature of the cave’s landscape as audience members will walk 0.75 miles round trip to reach Rafinesque Hall. Audiences will also be encouraged to move about the hall during the performance in the absence of formal seating.

Superstar cellist and United Nations Messenger of Peace, Yo-Yo Ma will be at the center of the performance in Mammoth Cave, and Abrams crafted the musical score with Ma in mind. Ma has been leading a personal project, Our Common Nature, which set him on a cultural journey to celebrate how nature unites audiences in a vision of a shared future.

By Tony Piedmonte, Office of Communications & Marketing