The Road Ahead

To kick off the year 2000, the United States Marine Band premiered composer John Williams’ American Journey on New Years Eve at the Lincoln Memorial. Over the course of that year, the Boston Symphony Orchestra gave the first performance of John Corigliano’s Symphony No. 2, the Curtis Institute for Music gave the first performance of Jennifer Higdon’s tone poem blue cathedral, dedicated to the memory of her brother, and New York City’s Orchestra of St. Luke’s premiered Joan Tower’s The Last Dance in Carnegie Hall.

In the 25 years since, orchestras have redoubled their commitment to commissioning and performing new works, attracting new audiences, and bringing value to their communities outside the concert hall. And they have done this even as the cultural landscape has continued to polarize and shift ever more dramatically.

What will carry these institutions into their next quarter century and beyond? Today’s orchestral leaders and artists point to a decline in music education in the public schools as a signal for orchestras to shoulder more responsibility in introducing the country’s youth to symphonic music. They discuss reimagining the concert experience in ways that invite more diverse voices into the hall—both onstage and off—and exploring fresh ways to fuse orchestral performance with contemporary genres of music.

Here, an array of orchestral leaders, musicians, and board members share their thoughts on what orchestras could be prioritizing today to galvanize their futures and ensure another 25 years of music-making and more.

Teddy Abrams
Music Director, Louisville Orchestra

I think the challenge, but also the opportunity, for American orchestras is to define the essential purpose of the institution. This kind of Futurism is highly relevant, and it’s a matter of survival as much as it is imagination. The utopian answer is one where we have reclaimed our role at the creative center of communities, and I think a lot of this has to do with our relationship to the to the kind of creative artists that we employ and the kind we should employ. Orchestras don’t employ composers to have an actual role in communities, for example. We commission all this stuff that often is played once. We need to reclaim the idea that the orchestra is the forum of the music of our time while also acknowledging that we’re always going to be on the fringes of culture.

In 25 years, I see orchestras as very dynamic organisms where the kind of new music that they’re generating is uniquely interesting to the people that actually live in their communities, in the way that new music used to be very appealing or even necessary for communities in the 18th and 19th centuries. Those things can all be achievable in a matter of a couple of decades.

Martin D. Bates
Executive Vice President and Chief Operations Officer, Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra

Our number one focus right now should be youth engagement. I think that orchestras fundamentally need to turn their attention externally to how they can help music learning thrive, to inspire and support it. This isn’t necessarily about building a presence in schools—it’s about being available and supportive, providing young people the opportunity to connect with musicians and perform on our stage and attend concerts with their families at accessible times. So it’s about ticket offers for families with students, taking our guest artists that visit from around the world and connecting them with our city’s youth, whether that’s through visits to schools, through master classes, or through meet and greets. As an example, last year and this year, we’re using Heinz Hall to host Pittsburgh Public Schools All-City Arts Showcase—things like this give students something to go back to school and talk about and be inspired about.

There’s this myth that the reason why you work with young people is because 20 years from now, they become your audience. I think the reason you do it is because they become your audience today. Sometimes it’s easy to view engagement with youth as being sort of a long-term pipeline. I actually think that that’s true, but it’s not just about the future. It’s about the now.

Charles (“Chuck”) Dickerson
Founder, Executive Director, and Conductor, Inner City Youth Orchestra of Los Angeles; Board Member, League of American Orchestras

Too many of our institutions are yielding the contemporary audience to other forms of music, and we would do well to focus our attention on how we can attract younger audiences who seem to be less present at our performances. I think we should use this year as a time to assess where we stand in regard to the attraction of audiences and to devise strategies to make sure that our art form survives, including interacting more with popular and film music. I feel like we need to accept the legitimacy of this music as perfectly exciting classical music. There are others who really don’t see it that way. Those people are not doing much to sustain our future.

Perhaps a way for us to begin that process this year is to devote ourselves to finding young people to be part of our organizations. Let’s each ask at least three people under the age of 35 to join our boards. Let’s make a pact among ourselves that we will deliberately collaborate together and make sure that our boards become younger and more diverse.

Michael-Thomas Foumai
Director of Artistic Engagement and Composer in Residence, Hawai‘i Symphony Orchestra

In today’s world, where anyone can easily access digital recordings of the finest orchestras, it’s essential to recognize the distinct value of performances and projects that celebrate an orchestra’s unique roots and identity. By embracing artistic initiatives that tell stories deeply intertwined with local communities, orchestras can truly stand out and make a lasting impact. At the Hawai‘i Symphony Orchestra, we are passionately committed to a recurring series featuring popular local artists (HapaSymphony) and educational programs that raise awareness about social and environmental issues (Symphony of the Hawaii Birds, Forests, and Seas). Additionally, we prioritize engaging a long-term composer-in-residence from our community to lead and develop these impactful initiatives. These dedicated projects, created for and by the community, foster trust and cultivate cultural capital, ensuring that our orchestra remains relevant and sustainable for generations to come.

Clive Gillinson
Executive and Artistic Director, Carnegie Hall

First, we must have total faith in the art form. I think the critical cliches around classical music—you know, about the audience aging out or classical music has run its course—have no validity whatsoever. I always look at other art forms as well. One would never say that the audience is greying for great paintings or for great literature. Of course, that doesn’t mean that classical music doesn’t have to continue to grow and develop, as you’d say about painting and literature and any other art form.

Second, we know that there are more and more things demanding people’s attention today. To me, all that says is that we should be ever more demanding on ourselves of standards that we should anyway be demanding of ourselves. We must commit to approaching new collaborations and programs and experiments with integrity; to do otherwise, or to seek originality for its own sake, would be superficial. That doesn’t mean as well that we’re not wanting to create new music because, of course, we’ve got to create the music of tomorrow as well. But it’s never an either/or sort of question.

Mieko Hatano
Chief Executive Officer, Oakland Symphony

I think we need to continue to lean into new musical voices, both composers and other kinds of artists as well. We’ve seen partnerships with artists who became famous on TikTok and YouTube and Instagram, folks that we wouldn’t necessarily have known before that are becoming really popular. And some orchestras are bringing them in for collaborations that are still rooted in classical music, but maybe offer new perspectives on how classical music can relate to the other music of today.

That’s really started to happen more since the pandemic, and I think it’s been really helpful in bringing in new audiences. It’s still important to play the canon, but there are fewer and fewer folks that only want to hear the big names like Beethoven and Brahms at orchestras. This is a really important way to develop our audiences of the future.

Sharon D. Hatchett
Board Member, Gateways Music Festival; Board Member, League of American Orchestras; Past President, Southside Friends of the Chicago Sinfonietta

There are so many challenges happening on a societal level to bring people apart. One of the things that I focus on is that, historically speaking, music has served as a unifier of people, regardless of one’s ethnicity, age, politics, whatever the case may be. Creative thinking about programming and what we can do to bring people together through music seems especially important for the financial sustainability of our orchestra field, right now.

The League has done sessions on how you can use music to heal at our National Conference in Houston. There were doctors present to talk about ways to innovate and make music accessible in ways that maybe people weren’t even aware of. We need to bring all kinds of people and diversity into the conversation about how to identify the creative talent that’s not otherwise being tapped, and that may include taking non-traditional approaches to finding supporters, including donors, to help further that vision and continue to drive people’s interest in orchestras and music.

Jennifer Koh, violin
Violinist; Founder and Artistic Director, Arco Collaborative

I think artists are the ones who have the ability to kind of dream the future, and imagine the future, and then lead us into that future. Giving artists more curatorial roles and leadership positions can allow us to use our imaginations. When I put together the “Sounds of Us” festival at the Kennedy Center, for example, some people had said, “Oh, we’ve never seen such a diverse audience,” or “We’ve never seen such young audiences come to this.” I think a big part of that was because we listened to and included the community’s own voices. The festival was an all-day marathon of new music premieres and world premieres, but the composers were chosen with inclusivity in mind.

As an artist, I feel like it’s our loss if we don’t hear stories different from our own. So that’s what I mean by listening to our communities and listening to people: it’s about listening to viewpoints that are different than your own. But that also means we have to have a kind of humility and a willingness to serve others. We have to realize that this life and this world of classical music—it’s about service, thinking about somebody more than yourself.

Kim Noltemy
President and Chief Executive Officer, Los Angeles Philharmonic

I feel like there are a few things that are crucial for all of us, right now. One is connecting with audiences in a different way than we have in the past. And that involves a lot of different things—do you have offerings that are not the traditional offerings for those who are new to the genre, or just like dipping their toe in the water? We need to be on the cutting edge of different ways to use programming. We have a Mahler Grooves Festival coming up that all kinds of people are really excited about because of the way it brings in student ensembles and community events like listening parties in historic spaces.

And then, there’s the question of how to combine our music with different genres of music. The LA Phil has really embraced that idea for a long, long time and found ways to do this at a high level. And that’s hard! It needs to be top quality. The orchestra can’t just be a backup band for a pop artist. This year, the LA Phil has been asked to play at Coachella, which I think is kind of fun and fabulous. It’s all hush hush, we don’t know what day it’s going to be until it’s announced or who we’re performing with, yet, and it’s not easy for an orchestra to work in that environment, but it’s really good for us to play and be seen in that environment.

Awadagin Pratt
Pianist

I don’t think organizations can do anything in 2025 that they’ve not previously prepared for. I don’t expect any changes from what has emerged post-COVID. Twenty-five years is a long time, especially when we’re seeing an acceleration of the frequency of life/course-changing events. The climate, pandemics, and politics will be having very clear, perhaps unexpected impacts on all types of planning for every kind of organization. Arts or otherwise. To have the best chance, orchestras should be very clear of their goals of service within their community; and to plan long-term to not operate as they have. In order for orchestras to sustain during the coming survival crises I’ve described above, they need to feel indispensable to their community. I acknowledge that it’s an incredibly tall order, but there’s probably not one institution for which this is the case. If I were leading an organization, that’s what we’d be pointing towards.

Laiyina Shate
Cellist; High School Ambassador, San Diego Symphony; Student Leadership Council Member, League of American Orchestras

If you have a large symphony like the San Diego Symphony in a city, there are opportunities to engage with your youth community. The SDO has a partnership where youth groups come into their space on weekends to work with musicians. I think it’s really important to use your space for concerts and events, but also to offer your human resources, your skills. Interacting with youth during concerts is one thing—but working with an individual symphony musician and having them pass on their knowledge person to person is such a different, special thing. I’d say that’s a number one priority.

But also, what if we built concert experiences that weren’t just about sitting in the hall? Something new. Last summer, I interned for the San Diego Symphony, and we had to plan our own whole concert. And a concept that my group came up was, “what if you have something that’s more active?” Events like running 5K’s and 10K’s are very in, especially on social media. What if we built a performance with repertoire around an event like that, concerts with activities that let people participate instead of just consume? I know it’s easier for me to say this than for an organization to implement it, but we need to be thinking of the whole experience more going forward.

Davóne Tines
Bass-baritone

I’ve been ruminating on an interesting new paradigm for performing arts organizations that has developed over the course of the past five years. As a Black creator, I have been provided a new level of opportunity and support to create new work. This is essentially an invitation for minority artists to engage in deep self-reflection and hone the values that define our work in order to justify and promote it. What I find ironic is that these predominantly white institutions have not afforded themselves the same considerations. They don’t actively self-reflect or work deeply to unpack the standing disconnect between the work they present and the audiences they are so eager to grow and retain. Orchestras are not philosophically justifying their offerings beyond saying, “You should come because we present excellence.” It’s clear that a large demographic doesn’t believe that claims of excellence and “adventurous, ground-breaking” programming are more than lip-service—empty promises that fail to resonate at the box office. Orchestras need to make a deeper, more nuanced, and clearer case for why audiences should care. This process of self-evaluation requires years of effort, true commitment, and aggressive, consistent messaging both internally and externally to demonstrate that meaningful work is being done and to share what discoveries are being made along the way. I often feel like the young person in artistic and board meetings, urging older administrators and board members to please take their time and think well beyond their usual approaches to strategic planning and institutional introspection.