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Posted by: Sam L. Richards

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At the outset of this year’s Orchestra Summit, there is one thing on my mind: I’m wondering what will happen here that will make me believe in the orchestra again.

I phrase my hopes for this coming week in such a way primarily because my relationship with the orchestra used to be quasi-religious. (Note here that I’m not referring to classical music; I’m referring to the orchestra itself as a vehicle of perpetuating a particular brand of cultural value through its performances). As a concertgoer, in my teens, I would attend my local orchestra as often as time and money would allow. Student-priced tickets certainly helped. It was a great place to bring my high-school dates, and fastidiously listening/watching provided me with a substantial portion of my formative musical education.

As a professional musician (or a seemingly eternal student, depending on your perspective), I’m no longer compelled to attend orchestral concerts. This devastates me. Somewhere along the line I seem to have lost my faith in the enterprise. Part of this, no doubt, is due to the limited repertoire that orchestras perpetually perform, year after year, season after season, such that a concert is like visiting an aging uncreatively-curated museum of artworks from a distant place and time; another part is certainly the result of sanctimonious self-defeating attitudes and behavior on the part of orchestras, administrations, marketing teams, and musicians; another part is the fetid air of entitlement that so frequently wafts out of many classical music organizations, as if they, a priori, belong at the top of the musical hierarchy and are deserving of endless praise (and funding) for serving us all a diet of artistic vegetables.

I want to be proved wrong this week. No kidding. I do. I desperately want to be shown that orchestras don’t think like this anymore, market like this anymore, behave like this anymore, and make art like this anymore. I want to be shown that orchestras are filled with creative thinkers, culturally sensitive curators, and, above all, art makers who not only sense but effectively communicate the contemporary vitality of their endeavors within the pluralistic context of 21^st century culture. I want to be caught up in a rapturous vision of the future of these organizations, a vision led by free-thinking, creative, courageous, audacious, innovative, risk-taking individuals, who challenge us all to think differently, educate differently, and make music differently. That sounds compelling. That sounds like a concert I’d like to attend.

Reconvert me. Please. I want to believe.

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