Thursday’s (6/2) Medium includes the text of League of American Orchestras President and CEO Simon Woods’s opening address at the League’s 2022 Conference in Los Angeles on June 2. “I keep coming back to three defining issues that I believe will fuel our artistic creativity and our financial success…. The first is about building a new audience that’s not just from the same demographic as the current one…. The second is about the promise of diversity.… There is no excellence without diversity. To deny that is to admit that classical music is a white art form created for white audiences…. I can’t accept that, and I think we need to show the world that none of us can accept it. This does not mean disparaging the inspiration of where we have come from. But it does mean defining the place we are going to as richer and more inviting—and it does mean going there faster…. The third is about relevance and community meaning…. American orchestras … are the most creative in the world, and capable of turning on a dime when circumstances demand it, as they just did. And circumstances still demand it … as we tackle those three critical pillars.”
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