MA Top 30 Professional: Robert Stivers

President
Kentucky State Senate

It pays to have friends in high places, and the Louisville Orchestra has a staunch ally in Robert Stivers. A Republican representing Kentucky’s 25th district since 1997, Stivers has served as Kentucky Senate President, the body’s highest-ranking member, since 2013.

But for the full story, “you have to back up about 50 years,” Stivers says. He was raised by a mother who was a “huge supporter of the arts”: Stivers counts concert tours by Duke Ellington and Count Basie, and theater trips to Lexington, Louisville, and Cincinnati among his treasured memories, growing up in southeastern Kentucky.

So, when Louisville Orchestra Music Director Teddy Abrams and then-Executive Director Graham Parker appealed to the Kentucky House, then the Senate, for American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) monies, Stivers was sympathetic, if wary. “I’m not really supportive of something that’s just Louisville-centric for the arts,” he says.

The Louisville Orchestra proposed what would become In Harmony, a statewide touring initiative that has included more than 125 events reaching over 30,000 Kentuckians. Some concerts have had an audience of a few hundred. Meanwhile, the orchestra’s Mammoth Cave performance with Yo-Yo Ma hit capacity so quickly
that scalpers tried to pawn off the free tickets.

In Harmony was so well received on its first tour that when it came time to allocate state funds in the following budget cycle, the Kentucky General Assembly put up the same amount—another $4.3 million—for the tour to continue. Stivers has seen that continued investment pay off in his own district. During the first In Harmony
tour, Beattyville, KY, where the median income was $12,341 in 2023, met the orchestra with a modest audience. In comparison, a recent return visit drew an attendance of nearly 1,300.

“This last time, a young lady and her two children came up to me and said, ‘You know, I’m not wealthy enough to take my children to see a performance like this, but you made it happen,’” Stivers says. “I didn’t make it happen; a lot of people made it happen. But that’s the type of response.”