1. The Louisville OrchestraLouisville Orchestra

Louisville’s amazing musical legacy was supported by a visionary mayor, Mayor Charles Farnsley, who, in the middle of 20th century, paired up with The Louisville Philharmonic Society and said, you know what, music can make a city, so let’s reach out to exciting new contemporary classical composers around the Western world. Let’s send them a little money and get them to write a piece that we will premiere in Louisville, and from that, they created a record label called First Edition Records, and suddenly a global musical spotlight arrived in the city. New music was happening here.

That philharmonic society became The Louisville Orchestra, and my parents grew up and thrived within that civic environment. Then the ballet thrived, the opera thrived and the theatre scene thrived, which was my specific entry as a child into the Louisville art scene – and our theatre scene was globally recognised as groundbreaking and vital. You know, these are things that were encouraged, with participation from all levels of society, and it meant that music just became part of the fabric of the city, as if it were kind of a civic utility. Kids like me benefited from the humanities being a recognised pillar of a functional society.

I’m friends with the current conductor of The Louisville Orchestra, Teddy Abrams and I reached out to him to help me choose a record for this list. These Louisville Orchestra records were around the house when I was a kid, and this one features ‘Orchestral Variations’, commissioned from Aaron Copland, which is a tremendous example of this beautiful endeavour. What sits behind what makes the record exist is so important to me.