Martin's sense of irony is appropriate. Three composers leading sessions without a pitch to play our stuff. What's wrong with us? It is true that we created our adventures with notions of musical creativity and participation in mind, not with advocacy for new music as such. But that doesn't mean we are not opinionated on the subject or that we are not advocates. Ed & Jon can chime in, but here are my two cents.

It's got to be a two way street -- composers have to be willing to write compelling music for the orchestra and orchestras have to be willing to try new things in equally compelling fashion. I disagree that there's no one out there -- if we're talking since 1950 then Shostakovich, John Adams, Steve Reich, Jennifer Higdon, Tan Dun, Thomas Ades, Arvo Part, Astor Piazzolla, Leonard Bernstein, and a whole host of others come to mind...But there are also some really great folks writing in collaborative media like film or for chamber groups because they know that they will get more attention, more rehearsal, more personal connection. (Joan Tower felt so disenfranchised from orchestras she had decided to forego the medium until some smaller more energetic community based orchestras approached her for the Made In America project.) Orchestras are the least friendly place for composers to work, even if sometimes the most exciting. In general, composers are given $$ but little in the way of rehearsal time, little in the way of direct contact with the performers who play the music and almost certain guarantee that the first performance will be the last. And sometimes that's because the piece is no good, and other times it's because orchestras don't work together enough or program in such a way that pieces have more than that intital burst of life.

Our discussions of pop music, led by Greg Sandow, included the realization that pop renews itself by playing new music all the time. What if we played new music all the time?