Only recently--over the past ten or fifteen years, perhaps--have symphony orchestras of all sizes started to think about becoming true community resources, valued members of their communities serving people who may never in their lives come to a subscription concert. At the League of American Orchestras, we call this behavior "achieving civic stature." And this, I believe, is the significant change that we are witnessing in symphony orchestras now.

Twenty years ago, if you had flown in from Mars, and had, without reading or listening to anything that any specific orchestra said about itself, simply observed it for a year and then been asked to write a mission statement for that orchestra based solely on what you observed, you would have been able to write with almost complete accuracy (perhaps just a tad of exaggeration), that the XYZ Symphony Orchestra is an organization that performs, at a high level, great music written for western symphony orchestra, for those people who already like it and can afford its ticket prices. That is not a mission statement most orchestras would trumpet with pride. But it is a moderately good description of how many of them were behaving.

When community engagement programs began, boards would ask managers--and I know this, because I was there--whether these programs would improve our ticket sales, and whether, if we did programs in communities of color, within a year or two we could expect to see a far more diverse audience in our subscription concerts. You may think I'm making this up, but I'm not. I've been in the room when that question was asked, in all seriousness.

But over the past decade or so there has been a strong movement toward real community engagement, toward making the orchestra a true community resource. After all, orchestras do take a considerable amount of money out of the community to support what they do; making high-quality symphonic music is an expensive proposition. They must be of value to a broad range of community citizens, far more than may ever attend subscription concerts. Orchestras do recognize their responsibilities at the center of their communities' cultural life. And they do recognize that while giving great concerts is central to that role, it is not the total role.

To give you a few examples of what I mean, I will risk annoying any number of American orchestras whose excellent and imaginative efforts I omit. Clearly I have space for only a small number of examples from orchestras I have visited recently. I put these forth because they are excellent examples of what hundreds of orchestras are doing--not because they are the only, or even necessarily the best, examples.

California's Modesto Symphony Orchestra has a broadly based program called "Arts Access Initiatives." Its stated mission is "presenting and promoting music to the widest possible audience by increasing involvement between the MSO and the community."  The responsibility, in the documents describing these programs, is squarely on the orchestra to network with the community and community leaders to uncover unmet needs, or needs that can be met with new partnerships. One example (of many) is a program called Youth at Risk. In cooperation with the county government's Center of Human Services, the MSO makes tickets available to selected young people and their families for a wide range of concerts. This program is run in a totally collaborative way with county officials, to choose the right young people.

The Modesto Symphony, the Walla Walla Symphony in Washington State, and a number of other orchestras operate instrument loan programs for the benefit of school children from families who might not be able to rent or buy musical instruments. These orchestras encourage their supporters, musicians, and audience members to donate instruments to the orchestra--for which they will get a tax deduction--and the orchestra then operates a monitored program of lending instruments out to families, observing the care of the instruments, and ensuring that the youngsters do in fact study on the instrument. 

There are orchestras with music therapy programs that take musicians into hospitals and senior centers. Orchestras are working more and more closely with school systems to incorporate music into the full curriculum. There was a time when orchestras' administrations and boards thought "well, the decline in music education in the schools is terrible, but fixing it is not our responsibility."  I don't hear that attitude much any longer. It is our responsibility to do anything and everything we can to keep this art form alive for the present and future generations. And if that includes getting deeply involved in communities and in educational systems, then that is what we will do, and are doing.

Other countries treat their composers of lighter music with much greater respect--whether it is Johann Strauss Jr. in Austria or Hans Christian Lumbye in Denmark, to give just two examples. There is a place in the repertoire for music of a lighter nature. But we're so damned serious in our concert life, so vested in making every concert an "artistic experience at the highest level," that we've neglected one of America's true originals.

Fortunately, 2008 is Anderson's centennial year, so his music is likely to get some attention. He wrote only one extended-length work, and that is the Piano Concerto heard on this disc (Naxos 8.559313, for those of you who still collect recordings, as I do). The work was premiered by the Grant Park Orchestra in Chicago, under Anderson's baton with Eugene List as soloist, in 1953. It got mixed reviews both there and in a subsequent performance in Cleveland, and Anderson withdrew it. He intended to revise it, but never did, though toward the end of his life he is reported to have found himself coming around to the piece again. After his death, his widow Eleanor Anderson decided to release it in its original form, and Jeffrey Biegel is one of its main proponents now. One wishes that the critics had been more open to this tuneful, colorful piece--perhaps Anderson would have been encouraged to write more music in larger forms.

But no matter. We shouldn't fall into the trap of diminishing the importance of Anderson just because most of his pieces are three or four minutes long, tuneful, and toe-tappingly rhythmic. The one American composer in this vein whom we seem to have treated well is John Philip Sousa. Perhaps Anderson's time is finally coming. This disc shows that he is a true American treasure, and great fun to listen to.

And I plan to continue writing this blog, at least until my brain dries up completely, sharing thoughts that come to my mind, and those observations that accrue from my travels around visiting orchestras.

And here's another one, from the June 26 edition of In the News:

"Last week it was the Kansas City Star; this week it's the Miami Herald. When will the blood-letting stop?" asks Susan Elliott today on MusicalAmerica.com. "On Monday, Miami Herald Classical Music Critic Lawrence Johnson received an 'involuntary buyout' from his newspaper. Just to be clear, the word 'buyout' when preceded by 'involuntary' means laid off, in this case with eight weeks severance pay. Such is Johnson's paper parachute. ... Like the Kansas City Star, the Herald is owned by the McClatchy Company, the third-largest newspaper chain in the country. McClatchy is severely in debt from its 2006 purchase of Knight Ridder, and so is cutting ten percent of its workforce, company wide. At the Herald, it's actually 17 percent, or 190 of its 1,400 employees. ... The Herald's executive editor reported to Johnson that the hue and cry from the classical music community, which has grown during Johnson's watch, was 'massive.' 'The response has really been heartening,' said Johnson by phone yesterday, 'and it makes the situation easier to deal with. There's a lot more going on in South Florida than anyone would think. I'm going to do my best to make sure these groups continue to get coverage, even if it's on a different platform.' " Johnson has started a blog to continue his coverage, classicalsouthflorida.blogspot.com.

It continues to amaze me that those who are in positions to shape the national agenda do not, in fact, give a damn about shaping anything. Instead of feeling a shred of responsibility to lead the country, to move national discussion beyond the realm of reality shows, sitcoms, and sound-bites, they exercise a stunning degree of follow-ship-putting their collective fingers in the air, sensing the current trends, and running to follow them. That the arts and culture do, in fact, represent among the most significant achievements of any society or civilization--and that for that reason alone they merit discussion in our national media--is irrelevant to those who shape those media. It is a sad commentary, and perhaps more than anything else it is indicative of why newspapers are being eaten up by the internet.

I hope that there are vocal protests in Kansas City and Miami. I hope that many join them, and I hope they will be successful. But it's beginning to feel as if once you plug one hole in the dike, another opens elsewhere.

The core producers of this event were Chorus America, Dance USA, the League of American Orchestras, Opera America, and Theater Communications Group. But 25 other service organizations were involved at various levels, representing just about every conceivable discipline in the performing arts. The overriding theme of this gathering--to which just under 4,000 people came--was to explore what the performing arts community might be able to do acting together to re-position the arts more centrally in the society that is America.

There were many stimulating discussions and sessions, and I'm certain that the highlights will be publicized elsewhere; they merit a fuller exposition than is possible or desirable in this space. What I want to comment on here is simply how gratifying it was to see administrators, trustees, volunteers, and patrons from a huge variety of art forms and a huge range of organizational sizes--not to mention the 700 artists who attended this convention--come together and talk to each other, in many cases for the first time.

The America Speaks process, which forces people of diverse backgrounds and experiences together around small tables--each facilitated to assure that everyone does speak (and listen)--asked us all to explore what we thought were the challenges/opportunities facing the performing arts in America, and what might be strategies for making progress on those issues on the national and local levels, and across organizations as well as within individual organizations.

These conversations were not meant to be a complete process, but rather the beginning of approaches that the arts community might take in elevating the position of the arts in our society. Some of the recommendations that came out of NPAC can be briefly summarized as relating to Value, Advocacy, Education, and Diversity. Topics debated and voted on under the Value and Advocacy headings ranged from creating a seat for culture in the cabinet to forging partnerships with other sectors to identify how the arts can serve community needs. Under Education, issues involved education reform and rescinding the No Child Left Behind act, innovative financial models to fund the arts (link to the tax base, dedicated sales tax etc.), and directly engaging teachers to integrate the arts into their teaching and professional-development programs. Finally, under Diversity it was acknowledged that there is still much to be done, and that national service organizations and others should be charged with stimulating dialogue at their meetings, creating internships and entry-level staff positions, and setting long-term goals to have staff, board, programming, and audiences reflect the demographics of the community. The goal is to have heads of service organizations take up these points--and many others that came up in the rich tapestry of discussions throughout the four days of NPAC--and to fashion a suggested plan of action.

Obviously, I am no better able than anyone else to predict the outcome of these efforts. But what I can observe, and what seems worth observing here, is the remarkable result of the planning of this convention. NPAC 2008 was the first time that a very diverse group of leaders from the full range of the performing arts worked together to this degree of depth and complexity--and the result is something that all can be proud of. The co-chairs of the convention, Marc Scorca of Opera America and Ann Meier Baker of Chorus America, had to herd cats for a period of almost three years (I know this--I was one of those cats), and they did a truly astonishing job, welding us all into a whole that was far more satisfying, stimulating, edifying, and uplifting than I, for one, could have imagined. It gives one much hope for the future of the arts in America.

Many of us feel that the arts have been increasingly marginalized in this country--a sure indication of a decaying society. Any careful examination of newspapers across America over the past 50 years will demonstrate dramatically the shrinking of arts coverage. Look at public television if you want further proof of the decreasing importance of the arts in America. Public television was started precisely to broadcast programming that would have too small an appeal for commercial TV. (Never mind that in my youth, classical music was seen regularly on commercial TV.) Now, public broadcasting frequently considers Sarah Brightman or Andrea Bocelli to be "highbrow" programming.

Government funding, in real dollars, has declined at all levels in the past quarter century.

And then there's our education system, which for the past 25 or 30 years in so many of our cities has been reducing or eliminating music and the arts.

Some of you have heard me say before that we as a field are not without guilt in creating the gulf that exists between orchestral music and major segments of our population. We have over the years allowed a rather precious, ritual-like atmosphere to accrue around our particular art form--in the way we present it and the way we talk and write about it--an atmosphere guaranteed to put some distance between the art and the people. If those who wrote about music wrote with the same passion, personal involvement, and communicative power that we find on the sports pages, we would be in a very different place.

But there are genuine societal issues at play as well. I see a growing climate of anti-intellectualism in America, and with it a lowering of the place of the arts on the national agenda. There is today a serious distortion of values in the world--a set of values that puts the short term ahead of the long term, that puts financial achievement ahead of ethical standards, and that minimizes the worth of intellectual achievement and of human expression. In truth, when future generations look back and judge the civilizations and societies of the past, it is first and foremost the cultural and artistic achievements of those societies that are spoken of. Whether it is Homer, Shakespeare, Mozart, Beethoven, Rembrandt, Picasso, James Baldwin, Garcia Lorca, or Leonard Bernstein--the artists and the art they created express the deepest and most profound thoughts of the civilizations in which they lived and worked. It is the achievements of those artists that, in fact, define civilizations, define humanity.

Many in positions of authority, those who shape education budgets and public agendas, seem to like simple answers: quantifiable, measurable, testable indications of progress. It is easier for them to talk and think in sound bites. So when we talk about the non-quantifiable, human qualities of music and the arts, when we start talking about the way in which an understanding of great art leads to a greater understanding of other cultures and peoples, to shaping a complete, creative, and productive human being more capable of bridging differences, we are asked to document it, perhaps on a graph. Well...I can't do that-- but every year of my life spent in music makes me more certain of it. You-- every one of you in this room today-- know it too. If I am pushed to "prove it," I might use as an example Daniel Barenboim's West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, made up of young musicians who are Palestinians, Arabs, and Israeli Jews--sitting together onstage, making music together instead of shooting at each other. Or Venezuela's El Sistema-- which has meaningfully changed the lives of tens of thousands of Venezuelan youngsters. For you see, in the end, the answer is in the music. All we have to do is bring it to people in a way that is inviting, involving, and communicative. And so our mission is to break down whatever barriers continue to exist so that the music itself can do its work.

We have historically been the field in the arts most resistant to change. While museums were adding audio guides, interactive exhibits, and imaginative new ways of bringing their art to their public, while opera companies were not only adding supertitles but utilizing advances in lighting and stage technology to keep their art form alive, many orchestras were continuing to present concerts that would look and feel pretty much the way concerts looked and felt to Brahms. But today I am seeing fresh, imaginative thinking everywhere in our field.

I can remember that 25 or 30 years ago, as music education started declining in hundreds of school systems, many in the orchestra field said, "That's bad. But it's not our job to fix it or deal with it." I don't hear that very much any more. I think we've all recognized that it is our responsibility to think about music education in the schools, and to partner with others to do everything we can to revitalize in-school music education. That is why close to 200 American orchestras have signed onto the League's Statement of Common Cause.

No orchestra can behave as if its mission statement were: "to perform, at the highest level possible, great music written for Western symphony orchestra, for those people who already like it and can afford its ticket prices." Those who shape our orchestras know this. The result is that today the field is innovating and experimenting in so many directions it can make your head spin. It is happening in cities and towns large and small, many of them places the national press rarely visits.

When I sit down with orchestra boards and staffs, more and more what they want to talk
about is civic engagement. If you go back ten or twenty years, when orchestras produced community programs, the aim of those programs was often to try to create ticket buyers. That has changed dramatically, and I'd like to think that the League has had something to do with encouraging and supporting that change. The League's new resource, On the Road to Authentic Civic Engagement: An Assessment Resource for Orchestras in Their Communities, is a direct response to a growing demand for tools to help in this area. More and more, orchestras are seeking ways to be true resources to all parts of their communities without regard to whether the people served ever turn into subscribers.

There is no question that giving full symphonic concerts in our concert halls is and always will be at the core of our mission. But its place at the center still leaves room for a broad and diverse range of activities that link us to our communities. That is vital to our future, and it is happening everywhere. Orchestras must be judged by all of their work--on and off the stage--and not solely by their main-series subscription concerts.

Orchestras are also thinking about concert presentation. Shouldn't the form of a symphony concert have evolved since Mendelssohn's day? Twenty-five years ago most conductors would not dare speak to audiences. Now, many of them do. You may think that is a trivial matter. I do not. The formalistic ritual of the symphony concert, almost mystical in its trappings, bears very little relationship to 21st-century America, and has for decades seemed more and more alien and distancing. I of course do not suggest that everything will be wonderful if all conductors start talking at every concert. But I do suggest that breaking down that wall of formality is essential, and that, when a conductor knows how to do it, this is one easy way to begin. Pre-concert lectures are common today, but were virtually non-existent 30 years ago. Thirty years ago no woman could seriously think about pursuing a career as a conductor. Now, while we may not have reached true gender equity--we're at least beginning to approach it.

In marketing and development, in patron service, in governance, in internal relationships, in re-thinking revenue models, in every single aspect of orchestra administration today there is a wonderful sense of questioning, of asking whether the way we did things 50 years ago is right for now. We are making real, if sometimes slow, progress on our internal relationships. The days in which musicians and managements were adversaries are slowly receding, and they must disappear. We are all in this together, and we better be unified.

Orchestras are trying experiments of varying kinds to reach the generations of young and middle-aged folks today who grew up re-wired by constant exposure to television, not to mention the Internet. Just how we recognize and deal with that is still a question, but it is a question being addressed. We must establish a culture in which orchestras are encouraged to experiment with concert formats, including visual elements, and be allowed to fail in some of those experiments. We should not underestimate the receptivity of young people to the music itself--even if we have to re-examine many aspects of the delivery system through which they experience it. Look at the health of our youth orchestras--I believe we have every reason to be optimistic about a future full of passionate musicians and listeners.

And if I may be allowed a parting rant about one of my hobby horses, it is crucial that more orchestras bring the element of fun back into the concert hall more frequently. I wrote some years ago in Symphony magazine about the disappearance of light classics from our main concert series--works like Suppé overtures or Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsodies--works that have for the past 40 or 50 years been largely relegated to "pops" concerts. I have news for conductors who won't play these works because they "belong on pops concerts." When they were written, there were no pops concerts. I accept that symphonic music can and must explore the full range and depth of human emotion, including grief and tragedy. But charm, wit, and humor are also parts of the human character, and they belong in our concert halls too. Fun at a "serious" concert is okay, folks.

Continuing the process of thinking about all of the issues confronting symphony orchestras is the challenge that we all face, and a challenge that the League is more firmly and passionately dedicated to than ever. As I leave the presidency, and turn it over to the remarkably capable and imaginative Jesse Rosen, I am pleased that I will retain a relationship with this organization. I want to say that you have--to serve you and your orchestras--an extraordinary organization. The League board and the management team and staff are as good as it gets. To find a board chair with the wisdom, commitment, and leadership skills of Lowell Noteboom is very rare, and we all treasure it. As for Jesse, he has many brilliant qualities. But my favorite, and I've told him this, is his utter refusal to accept received, or conventional, wisdom. If you really want to spark his imagination, just say, "Well, that's the way we've always done it." Nothing gets his juices flowing quite like re-examining "the way we've always done it." His questioning, probing intellect, combined with his deep love of music, are qualities that are going to be of enormous value to each and every one of us who cares about orchestras. And I could go through every single strength on the League's remarkable management and staff team-- but if I did we'd be here through your scheduled flight departures. But I want you to know that being surrounded by this team during my time at the League has been a privilege and an honor.

For whatever it is worth, I remain optimistic about the health of orchestras in the future. Are there issues to be faced? Certainly. Are those who run orchestras meeting those challenges, and demonstrating imagination as they adapt to a changing environment? Absolutely. There is no question in my mind about that. This art form has a broad appeal and deep meaning to human beings of wildly different cultural, social, and economic backgrounds--that is because it communicates to us things that cannot be communicated in words. The strength of our orchestras is, in fact, the strength of the music they play.

As we go forward helping to shape the future of this art and, therefore, this society, let us all work to make certain that America takes the lead in making the future something more than faster computers, bigger buildings, more productive factories, greater profits--and certainly about something other than more devastating wars and conflicts. The peak of human achievement, in civilization after civilization, is represented by its artistic and cultural achievements. The great playwright Arthur Miller may well have put it best: "When the cannons have stopped firing, and the great victories of finance are reduced to surmise and are long forgotten, it is the art of the people that will confront future generations. The arts can do more to sustain the peace than all the wars, the armaments, and the threats and warnings of the politicians." Thank you.
 

Secondly, even if the answers were obvious, or knowable, the solution is almost never brought about by public pressure or commentary. Emotions run high on both sides of any labor-management dispute, and are frequently the biggest barrier standing in the way of finding common ground. The more positions are staked out in public, and endorsed or promoted by one faction or another, the harder it is for people to give up those positions.

When I did serve as a mediator in labor disputes (in Nashville, Louisville, Houston, San Antonio, Honolulu) one absolute insistence of mine was that there would be no more talking to the press, no more printing of flyers or brochures, in fact no public comment of any kind, except that which I would issue. And all I would issue, during the process, was "no comment." 

So while I understand the desire of those who have asked me to write about the problems, I hope you can understand why I would not even consider it. All one can do is watch from the outside, hope that all the parties will have honest conversations with each other, and offer advice or assistance very privately if it is requested. Any public forum for this kind of dispute is more likely to exacerbate than to calm it.

Well, in the months of March and April, 2008, I saw four different women on the podium - three of them conducting their own orchestras (Janna Hymes in Williamsburg, Miriam Burns in Tallahassee, Sarah Ioannides in El Paso) and the fourth as a candidate for the job of music director in Berkeley. When you think that that represents the number of women I experienced on the podium over a period of about twenty years, the rapidity of the change is stunning.

It is, of course, about time. Anyone who denies that there was bias, severe bias, in the music world against the idea of women on the podium is either remarkably naïve or lying (or, I suppose, both).  Even as the degree of bias began to lessen, the situation was self-fulfilling: Why would a woman study conducting when there were no opportunities to make a career in it?  

But look at the situation today. At the Reno Philharmonic, three of the five final candidates for music director are women. Two of six in Berkeley. When I talk to search committees, the issue is a non-issue; it doesn't come up. They are clearly evaluating talent with total disregard for gender.

If I sound surprised, it is only because I know how strong the bias was for a very long time in the symphonic world. And to see it change so dramatically during my own professional lifetime is extremely heartening and gratifying.

Then there is the way the ESO does music director searches. Their track record is nothing short of astonishing. . Rather than take the safe route - a route taken by many of America's smaller and mid-sized orchestras - by choosing an "experienced" music director, the Eugene Symphony has approached finding a new music director with the viewpoint that "we want to be the first stop on someone's rise to a major career." I don't know if they have ever articulated it publicly, but I know that they have thought "if the music director we hire is still here in ten years, we probably made a mistake."  And what have they done since they've adopted that approach? They have hit three home runs. Marin Alsop, Miguel Harth-Bedoya, and now Giancarlo Guerrero are all at various points on the stage of international careers - and all got their start in Eugene. It used to be conventional wisdom that you could not build a major conducting career in America unless you were lucky enough to start at a major, international-level orchestra, as Bernstein did in New York, Tilson Thomas in Boston, or Leonard Slatkin in Saint Louis. The Eugene Symphony Orchestra, single-handedly, has changed the landscape.  And hundreds of similar-sized orchestras across the country have changed the profile of what they're looking for, and of how to do a music director search, copying the Eugene Symphony Orchestra.

Of course this also means that they have set the bar for themselves very high. One appointment like that might be luck - but three? That means they know how to do it right, and that, in turn, leads to expectations that they'll do it again now that they are once more in a music director search. And you know what? I imagine they will!

By combining forces, we have been able to attract speakers and put together sessions that no one service organization could have attracted on its own. The result is going to be a very intensive, stimulating, provocative, and, I believe, productive gathering.

The must-see general sessions feature such speakers as business guru Jim Collins (author of Good to Great and Built to Last) and the visionary founder of Venezuela's music education program "El Sistema," José Antonio Abreu (whose session will be moderated by Marin Alsop). In addition, seminars from National Arts Strategies and the League's Orchestra Leadership Academy will offer NPACers substantial learning opportunities.

League constituency-meeting blocks will take place as usual, but time will also be set aside for breakouts, workshops, and special League presentations addressing the "El Sistema" success, electronic media, and what is becoming a hot-button topic, the "churn" phenomenon--how our orchestras attract newcomers but fail to effectively convert them to long-term supporters.

NPAC ends with a 21st-century Town Meeting on Saturday, conducted by AmericaSpeaks, during which participants will create the agenda that activates the performing arts community in America. Not to be missed.

To register, and for complete schedules, you can visit: http://www.performingartsconvention.org/.

League members may want to see more specific information on the League's web site:
http://www.americanorchestras.org

I hope to see you in Denver.

I have written continuously about symphony orchestras and community engagement. I keep saying that the biggest change in the behavior of orchestras around the country in the past decade or so is that they are re-examining their relationships with their communities, expanding those relationships so that they are so much more than givers of concerts - although of course those concerts are and will always be at the center of what they are. But orchestras must be more than givers of subscription concerts - they must be meaningful to a wide range of people, many of whom may never actually attend those concerts. From a time when community programs started with the hope that they might increase attendance, they have become programs with a different goal - a goal of the symphony orchestra being a true community resource.

Obviously those of us in the orchestra business know full well that the cost of operating an orchestra can make tickets priced in such a way as to exclude some people from our concerts. The MSO has a wonderful answer for that: a program called Sound Check. Sound Check is a card that can be purchased by or for any student for $30. That card allows, with no further charge, admission to any and all Modesto Symphony classical concerts, with no limitations.  What a fabulous approach - and an idea that I'd love to see others adopt.

Then there is the Youth at Risk program - where young people identified by the Center for Human Services in Stanislaus County are given free tickets for them and their families to attend two of the orchestra's Friends and Family Concerts.

Add to that the Call for Instruments program - something that I'm learning is done by a growing number of orchestras. The MSO encourages their own musicians, donors and patrons, as well as community members in general, to donate old instruments that are no longer in use, so that school children in the area who cannot afford instruments can actually have an instrument with which to study music.

The Modesto Symphony has developed a relationship with the Hispanic Youth Leadership Council. The Hispanic community in Modesto takes a very strong interest in their young people and in developing them educationally and culturally. The orchestra works regularly with this organization in many ways. For instance, it hosted a residency with composer Gabriela Frank for over a year, and one of her roles was to create a work that reflected the community. In order to do this she spent a lot of time visiting various neighborhoods and organizations throughout the area. She came to develop a relationship with the Hispanic Youth Leadership Council, visiting the young people a number of times and discussing and showing how she went about the composition process. Some 200 of these young people were guests of the Modesto Symphony Orchestra at a concert featuring the premiere of her work.

What I've written here is not an exhaustive list of the Modesto Symphony Orchestra's community programs, nor am I suggesting that other orchestras are not doing equally interesting, imaginative, or thorough work. In fact, I know the opposite to be true - many orchestras are doing imaginative work in the area of civic engagement. But I wanted to share with you some of the programs I learned of specifically in one city from visiting that city - to point out something that we in the orchestra world know, but that many in this country do not know. These kinds of programs don't always get a lot of local publicity, because the press generally prefers either something glitzy and glamorous, or a crisis. The meaningful, ongoing, beneath-the-radar work of engaging communities goes on while orchestras retain a reputation for being "elitist," a word that just infuriates me. So I wanted to share just some programs of just one orchestra in hopes that they might call attention to the work of all orchestras - and perhaps provide a spark of inspiration to some orchestra administrations who might just say "hey...there's a good idea. Let's look into that one."

Then there is the area of engaging guest conductors. In the old days, this used to be the purview of the music director - but more and more orchestras are putting this responsibility in the hands of the management (almost always with consultation from the music director). Again, in my view, this is a good development. Many conductors don't actually get to see a lot of other conductors in action, and good administrators do try to get around - and they also have a wide range of information available to them. Orchestras avoid the sticky issue of podium trades ("you conduct my orchestra, and I'll conduct yours") and any other conflicts (conductors promoting other conductors represented by the same agent). And, in my view, every orchestra begins its search for its next music director the moment it hires a new music director - at least by becoming familiar with the talent pool of conductors available at the orchestra's level.

One thing I have not witnessed, but have heard about from people who have witnessed it, is the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra's "war room," where programming meetings go on for hours  meetings that include Music Director Robert Spano, the executive director, the artistic staff, the marketing and development staff, the librarian, and a number of others who have a stake in the final programs. They argue, cajole, tease, challenge, and stimulate each other, and the final programs represent the best of all of those minds. That to me is the ideal approach to programming, adapted to the size and skill set of any specific orchestra. The old-style music director who says "programming is my responsibility, and here are my programs," is, I think healthily, becoming a thing of the past. Programs made collaboratively, with a range of inputs, are far more likely to actually relate to the community in which the orchestra lives. In the best of all worlds, one would never have to ask the question "who has the final authority," because programs would emerge organically from the discussion. If there needs to be a "final authority," it is the music director. But in my mind, the need for there to be a "final authority" is already indicative of a flaw in the process.

Without those crucial elements of a supervisory relationship, how can it be said that music directors now are more commonly reporting to executive directors? They simply are not, and I don't care what any piece of paper, or computerized management flow chart, may say.

On the other hand, it must mean something. Why would this change have happened if it had no meaning? Perhaps the meaning is subtle and largely psychological - to give the executive director a bit more power in the relationship, to balance out the strong personality of a conductor/music director. Perhaps the meaning is that the board now thinks it is off the hook. But I don't see how it is.

I am sometimes asked, usually by less experienced orchestra administrators, some variant of the following: "If I and my music director cannot agree on an issue, at what point is it appropriate to bring it to the board to resolve?  And should that be the whole board, or just the chair or executive committee?"  My answer is always the same: "If you are at that point, the chances are all is lost."  The relationship between a music director and executive director is not often written or spoken about in public, though it is a constant thread of management professional-development seminars, orchestra conferences and meetings, etc. It must be a pure partnership - one like a marriage. My wife and I may disagree on occasion - but our friends don't know when, and over what. We find a way to resolve it. Privately. So it is, or should be, with executive directors and music directors. They must find a way to resolve those issues, without going to the board for arbitration. Once that starts, it means the relationship is doomed.

And the interesting thing to me is that that has always been true - both in the traditional reporting structure where the two are equals on the organizational chart, and in the new structure where, on paper, the music director reports to the executive director. I continue to be a bit befuddled, because I continue to not see that the changed structure has any substance to it at all.

But the customer experience begins long before the concert, long before the arrival at the hall. How customer-friendly is the ticket-purchasing experience? How easy to use is the website? How helpful and warm is the box-office staff? What about the ushers? What is the parking situation? Are there sufficient restrooms? Is the hall comfortable? Are the seats comfortable? All of these issues, and others as well, are important ingredients in generating satisfied customers. Since you want satisfied customers who come more frequently, and you'd ideally like them to become donors at the highest level possible, paying attention to every single aspect of the experience is a very good idea.

Orchestras frequently feel that they have no control over many of those issues, particularly when they do not own or operate the hall. But aggressive negotiation, sometimes at the highest board level, can improve many of those areas. Even, in some cases, the parking situation. If the orchestra is a true asset to downtownand if the city leaders, including the mayor, recognize that or can be made to recognize thatit is sometimes possible, particularly when there are changes to the downtown area, to push hard for parking that will benefit the orchestra. I'm not naïve enough to think this is always possible. But I do know that there are times when the important issue of how the customer gets from home to the concert and back again is not even thought about by the orchestra. And sometimes, in the right situation, that can be addressed. Board members with strong city connections can be a huge asset here. The ability to have a good meal before or after the concert is yet another factor that becomes part of that total experience. Board members often tend to think that whatever time they like to attend concerts is the time everyone finds most convenient. But boards may not be typical of the audience. Real market analysis and study should be doneand not only of the current audience, but of that potential audience who isn't coming.

Not every orchestra can find an ideal solution for every component of the customer experience. The point is that thinking about and discussing all aspects of that experience, and ascertaining which ones you can affect, is an important component of success.