The Louisville Academy of Music is a non-profit community music school in Louisville, Kentucky in the Crescent Hill neighborhood. Founded in 1954 by Robert French and Donald Murray, the academy has had over 1,200 students in its over 50-year history. It originally operated from three rented rooms in Highlands area of Louisville and moved to its current location in 1971.
The academy currently offers lessons in piano, strings, voice, woodwinds, brass, guitar, and percussion for students of all ages. The present building on Frankfort Avenue consists of studios, a recital hall, a library and archive that contains thousands of books, records, and files on Kentucky musicians and organizations. The academy has presented more than a thousand programs and has trained over ten thousand students, many of whom have become composers, teachers, chamber music performers and members of major orchestras. Today, the academy is still run by Robert French, and his wife, Ruth French.
Robert French won the 1999 Governor's Awards in the Arts for his work with the school.
Famous quotes containing the words academy and/or music:
“...I have come to make distinctions between what I call the academy and literature, the moral equivalents of church and God. The academy may lie, but literature tries to tell the truth.”
—Dorothy Allison (b. 1949)
“And in the next instant, immediately behind them, Victor saw his former wife.
At once he lowered his gaze, automatically tapping his cigarette to dislodge the ash that had not yet had time to form. From somewhere low down his heart rose like a fist to deliver an uppercut, drew back, struck again, then went into a fast disorderly throb, contradicting the music and drowning it.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)