One lovely feature of the concert was a post-concert talk held by the music director and soloist, with me as a guest. It was held in a room off the balcony - about 50 people attended. The highlight was a 12-year-old girl, who was attending her first-ever symphony concert, and who was a string student in a program run by the Orchestra. She was totally captivated by the concert, wanted to absorb everything she could from the soloist and from the conductor, and she asked the most questions of anyone in the room. For her, it seemed to me, this whole evening was possibly a life-changing event.

This is also an orchestra which, while of course not without occasional tensions, is operating with a balanced budget, a wonderful sense of camaraderie among music director, staff, Board, volunteer Guild, and musicians. There is a culture of community pride and spirit in the organization - a sense that they just might have something special and their job is to nurture it. In fact, in a ninety-minute lunch that I had with the musicians, without management in the room, we discussed a wide range of topics, including governance, fund raising, audience development, and setting an institutional vision, and I thoroughly enjoyed the conversation.

An interesting note: when I asked the musicians in Pensacola to raise their hand if they played in more than one orchestra, virtually every hand went up. I remember a few years ago meeting with the orchestra committee in Harrisburg, PA, and most of the members of that committee played in 4-6 different orchestras. This phenomenon is of course not unique to these two metropolitan areas, but it is a reality for many of the orchestral musicians in our midst. I think it might surprise people to learn that though it can be tough to piece together a living this way, a great many of the musicians who play in multiple, smaller orchestras do enjoy the opportunity to make music for a variety of different organizations in different communities, as the musicians in Pensacola seem to.

How are we going to get across to the American public that the news story of American orchestras is not one of crisis and/or financial trouble - but in fact one of astonishing quality?

To hear a performance of La mer in Pensacola, or to hear a recording (as I just did) of a performance of Mahler's First Symphony from the Traverse Symphony Orchestra in Traverse City, Michigan, and in both to experience music-making that someone with 43 years of professionally listening to classical music can find a gratifying experience, is to bear witness to the remarkably good quality of what is happening in our orchestras.