So, Doug…now you're the cat wrangler. You want us to tie all this together, and come up with some specific new things to do.

I'd love to hear about that from everybody. How about two suggestions from each of us -- one that addresses the outside world, and one that addresses internal situations.

I've already made outside-world suggestions (advertising that actually reaches people, free distribution of recordings). But I'm happy to make more. How about new music programming that truly reflects what's being written these days? I've noticed that many orchestras seem to program a narrow selection of new music. Cleveland, Philadelphia, and Chicago favor European modernism. (Well, at least Chicago did under Barenboim). Baltimore under Zinman favored accessible Americans. Boston, with Levine in charge, is doing American modernists.

Why don't all orchestras do a bit of everything? And why don't works that get a strong reception immediately circulate everywhere? I never understood why, for instance, when Gorecki's Third Symphony was so popular, orchestras didn't program it (and also Gorecki's other symphonies -- the first is entirely modernist, a shock if you think all his music is like the third, and the second is an especially powerful piece).

Or how about Jennifer Higdon's Concerto for Orchestra? It made a sensation, from what I hear, in Philadelphia when it was premiered. Why wasn't it quickly played elsewhere. Or Michael Torke's percussion concerto, that made such a hit in Indianapolis that -- as I've heard from both Michael and from Ana Papakhian, the orchestra's publicist -- the audience got so involved buying CDs at intermission and having them signed by Michael and by Colin Currie, the percussion soloist, that they didn't want to go back in the hall to hear Tchaikovksy's Fifth.

Yes, I know that schedules are set in advance, and that Higdon's Blue Cathedral is being played all over the place. But schedules can be changed, and it's just absurd, to me, that audiences have no idea what new music is out there. Ask the most loyal and adventurous orchestra subscriber to name the three best orchestral works premiered in the last year. Or even the last few years. They can't do it, because they won't have heard the pieces, or even probably heard of them. (Orchestras could also make sure CDs of notable new works are available, whether they were playing those pieces or not.)

Finally, while I'm ranting here, orchestras have to find some way to come to terms with the newest new music being written, by younger composers, which (at least in the US) is heavily inflected by pop music, and often isn't written for orchestral forces at all. some of the best new stuff I hear falls into this large general category. Orchestras are falling badly behind the curve here, and if they want to attract a new, young audience -- even a new young audience of young classical musicians -- they need to jump into the present day. Gary, I'm sorry to say this, but doing Harrison Birtwistle in 2005 isn't a move toward any kind of future that I can see. This isn't a criticism of Birtwistle or his music, but to play his music is, from a new music point of view, very conservative programming. (Of course the audience seems to be about 100 years behind what's happened in music, but that's yet another question.)

As for an internal innovation, I'd love to see orchestras become venues for their musicians' individual creative work. There are musicians who compose, musicians who play jazz, musicians with rock bands, musicians who play chamber music, musicians who do striking work with kids, musicians who teach classes in local colleges, musicians who use their instruments in other wonderful ways, like Cindy deAlmeida, principal oboe in Pittsburgh, who's done remarkable work with asthma sufferers, who turn out to benefit greatly from playing the oboe, thanks to the special kind of breath control the instrument requires.

I'm not going to say orchestras ignore these things. And I'm not going to say they can further absolutely anything their musicians do. Maybe there are quality questions (or maybe it's more important to let the musicians run free). But when musicians in the Metropolitan Opera orchestra have a band that plays at CBGB's in New York, I doubt the opera house takes any interest in it. I'd like to see orchestras promote what their musicians do, and help them in any way possible, so that musicians' projects become, in some way we'll have to work out, projects of the orchestra as well (within reason). Ideally orchestras' administrative staffs could help out. And yes, I know orchestras are understaffed, but we have to dream, and we can't go torching our dreams just because at first they don't look practical.