| I once heard a German conductor talking about how many orchestras in Europe are almost completely state funded and therefore don't even need to rely on ticket sales for their budgets. The result is that many of the orchestras are adventurous in their programming but often times can't get anyone to show up. It's a situation right out of Milton Babbit's essay "Who Cares if You Listen."
On the other side, many orchestras seem to be bending over backwards to please (and expand) their audience. San Francisco did a rock album with Metallica a few years ago. What started out (I believe) as a one-time concert of video game music in L.A. has been touring the country.
In between are holdouts like New York and Boston, who it seems are still to conservative to program music that your average 18-40 year old would be interested in. The new music that is played (at least in Boston) is some of the most adventurous (read:unlistenable for the un-initiated)music out there. They can do this because they've been around for 150 or so years and have the financial base to do it.
I think thats where it's going to be really interesting and possibly the place where you will see the most change in the next few decades. It's not hard to see that the audience for classical music is aging very quickly. Anybody who goes to a Friday afternoon concert in Boston (many times the most well-attended of their weekly series) can look out into the audience and see a sea of grey hair and shiny domes. What happens when this audience isn't there anymore? What happens when ticket sales go down and the aging benefactors are gone? How much financial pain will the NYP have to go through before they start paying closer attention to younger audiences, and caring who listens?
-Jimi |