Thanks to Doug for highlighting the UK article for the blog. Some of these same issues have been a source of anxiety for me throughout this process. Let me voice what I detected from the reactions in Cleveland and since then.

First: by asking these basic questions related to music, do we have our heads up in the artistic clouds while we all face deficits (or other types of financial or audience-building challenges)? Seemingly, some of our forum members who exited sessions probably felt that our musical adventures were sorely out of touch, irrelevant to the "real" business of running orchestras.

Second: by presenting small, intimate workshop style adventures, did we fail to make the case for scaleable work that would be relevant to the larger audience groups we most often serve?

I think that the the contributors to the blog have done a good job of extrapolation on the second question. The solutions are a matter of artistic interest and will. And to be clear, making the case for "scaleable" work was not part of our original aim. It was to take us into a deeper exploration of what it means to be an "agent of artistic experience." We were going for a result that was more personal than institutional. Can that eventually connect to shifting intentions and beliefs, as John Shibley asked? The bloggers seem to say...maybe, yes.

The first criticism, though, is a tougher nut to crack. And from what I can determine, the jury is still out. Nowhere do we have unassailable proof that if you engage communities in more joint artistic projects, more personal exploration, more play, that it will lead to balanced budgets and a revitalized scene. It's too early, and truth is, I'm not sure myself. But having seen the power of this kind of work in a number of settings, I'm willing to advocate for experimentation. At the end of the day, I'm probably as guilty as anybody of administrative conservatism, and my own style is to control experiments, plan for incremental growth, and document process as much as possible. Not the stuff of management radicalism, but then again, if we can create a culture of experimentation -- something orchestras have had a hard time doing -- wouldn't that be a cause to celebrate, too?