Conference 2025: Follow the Music for Systemic Change

Speaker(s): Lee Bynum, Faculty, Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy; antonio c. cuyler, ph.d., Professor of Music, Entrepreneurship & Leadership, University of Michigan; Loki Karuna, Executive Director, American Composers Forum; Vanessa Rose, Chief Executive Officer, American Composers Forum; and Ari Solotoff, Attorney, Drummond Woodsum

Music is a powerful source of engagement, emotion, and artistic expression. However, an artist’s performance or an orchestra’s concert program is also a form of speech (whether explicit or implicit) rooted in the history and context of today’s world. As a result, an orchestra’s charitable and artistic purposes may appear to be at odds with maintaining a neutral or objective position as a publicly-funded nonprofit and tax-exempt organization. How can orchestras continue to demonstrate why symphonic music matters, when they must also attempt to remain institutionally neutral as artistic enterprises? Or, should they? Drawing from their lived experiences in and around orchestras, session leaders highlighted successes, challenges, and the degree to which orchestras can embrace freedom of creative expression as a pathway for transformation, while also adhering to advocacy constraints, anti-discrimination laws and policies, and other internal and external forces.

Further resources

• League Report: Americanizing the American Orchestra
• Universal Declaration of Human Rights
• Qs from Follow the Music for Systemic Change
• Exempt purposes – Internal Revenue Code Section 501(c)(3)
• American Composers Forum

This session has been sponsored by RATstands.

Photo Credit: Douglas Carter Photography