For Columbia College to choose to recognize someone who manages one of these ill dinosaurs from another era is an act of some courage, and I appreciate it. Since I have been given this forum, I would like for a few minutes to examine the patient, and perhaps give my own prognosis. The truth is that the history of orchestras, as with many of the arts in America by the way, is a past that is marked by some practices that can be called elitist in the worst sense of that word. Well, I beg to differ. We actively kept non-whites off our stages.
Classical music is a strange field.
But the times, they are a changing. It plays it for people who already like it, and can afford its ticket prices. I pointed out that, that was not a mission statement of which we would be proud. This doesn't mean, of course, that every person is going to fall in love with Beethoven symphonies. And I believe, that the orchestras of the twenty first century are all, in their own ways, going to be seeking ways to do the same thing.