Straws in the wind

I'm picking up some changes going on in at least a few orchestras, involving the musicians' role.

First, musicians are getting involved in artistic planning, formerly the exclusive province of the music director, the artistic administrator, and (sometimes) the executive director. One reason, in fact, that some orchestras wonder whether they want a traditional music director is that they want the musicians to have some of the power the music director traditionally has. And not just in programming -- also in hiring musicians, giving them tenure, and, if necessary, firing them. At some orchestras, these decisions might be made only by the music director. But now I'm hearing about orchestras where the music director (or principal conductor, or artistic advisor; titles might vary) is just one member of decision-making committee, and gets just a single vote.

I also know one orchestra that wants its public face to be its musicians, not some world-famous conductor who might spend just 10 weeks a year in this orchestra's city. The musicians, the thinking goes, are there more or less permanently -- and in any case are playing a far greater artistic role in planning and hiring than they used to. Plus, since they live in the city where the orchestra plays, the orchestra can try to build community roots by featuring them.

These changes come after many years of bad feeling between musicians and management, and also at a time when orchestras can't afford to pay musicians as much as they used to. In some orchestras, at least, hostility between musicians and management is being replaced by steps toward cooperation, as everybody starts to realize that they're all facing the crisis of classical music together. And there's also a sense of a tradeoff -- if musicians are going to get less money, in exchange they're given more power.

And about that classical music crisis: I hear many people in the business saying that there simply aren't as many people interested in classical music as there used to be. The crisis, then, boils down to something very simple. The audience is smaller. Makes me wonder how some orchestras can sustain such long seasons, and makes me wonder even harder how the Metropolitan Opera can. But that's a question for another time. Right now it's just striking that the shrinking audience isn't treated (at least in the circles I move in) as a theory, or a future danger. People talk as if it's a verified fact.