The end of the world (as we know it)

It's a scary, yet quite telling time for orchestras these days. Last week, the New York Philharmonic posted its largest recorded deficit in its 168 year history. That's saying quite a bit, especially in the wake of the appointment of its young new music director, Alan Gilbert. In the same week, the Cleveland Orchestra's musicians made the unprecedented move of handing out leaflets to its audience prior to a concert in order to make a statement amidst contract negotiations. This, from one of the greatest and highly paid orchestras in the country.

What is happening? Essentially, our profession is struggling to catch up with the catastrophic economy and rapidly changing societal tastes with a dinosaur of an organizational paradigm. Despite unrivaled quality, audiences, donors and sponsors are either pulling back their focus on the arts and entertainment, and we are witnessing a possible cyclical or permanent cultural ice age for certain art forms. In some ways, it doesn't really matter which, for many arts institutions are increasingly being forced into oblivion on a daily basis all over the world. What is needed is a general revolution of presenting classical music in a way that the American public can embrace broadly; a new approach that accepts the arts as a business (at least in part) and the viewer as a consumer with limited time and resources, and then begin to ask the difficult question of whether we are truly in touch with the public we are supposedly serving in the first place.