Introduction: New Stories, New Games

Introduction: New Stories, New Games

By Alex Laing

I love playing in an orchestra. I can tell you the very moment I fell in love—the measure number, even—but that’s another story.

This story—the story of this book—begins with a fortunate chance meeting between my coeditor Ed Finn and me. It was at a holiday gathering, just as the darkest days of the COVID-19 pandemic were beginning to recede. It was fortunate, from my perspective, because while I was meeting Ed for the first time, I was already a fan of the program he directs, Arizona State University’s Center for Science and the Imagination (CSI).

I was a fan because of The Weight of Light and Cities of Light, two books that CSI had published, which blend speculative fiction, essays, and art to imagine how we might live in future communities powered by solar energy. I enjoyed reading and thinking through the stories and essays, but even more, I was fascinated by the process behind these books—how they came to be, what their purpose was. (See the “How We Made This” section for information on the collaborative imagination workshop in April 2023 that kicked off Sound Systems, and details on how these books are created.)

In terms of the purpose of these books: it’s imaginative time traveling. Perhaps it’s using stories as a technology to imagine and visit futures, inviting us to bring insights back to today. Perhaps stories about possible futures are speculative arenas. Perhaps in those arenas we can examine and revise our settled assumptions about shared values and priorities, the workings of institutions, and our definitions of terms like community, belonging, and virtuosity. 

However you frame it, I was struck by CSI’s use of speculative fiction to help us explore new futures and find paths forward. I thought, this is exactly the kind of tool professional orchestras could use.

Here’s the thing: while I love playing in orchestras, I’ve struggled with them as organizations. Making music in this network of coordination—a thundering herd, a darting school, a soaring flock—is mostly joy. Crucially, though, it’s a performance of coordination, one that is intensively rehearsed. What I struggle with is how we actually coordinate ourselves as organizations. 

Professional orchestras are designed to produce a product that we believe is timeless and holds its value timelessly too. But that belief ignores deeper questions. I’m thankful that the home I grew up in made it impossible for me to ignore questions about whether classical music is truly universal, and about how art upholds racial hierarchies. Finishing my training in the late 1990s at Manhattan School of Music and later at places like Aspen, Tanglewood, and the New World Symphony, I was filled with ideas about twenty-first-century musicians and a new version of the American Symphony Orchestra. But once I began my career, I was confronted with the gap between these aspirations for reinvention and the realities of siloed institutions that resist change by design. While our concerts intend to, and often do, tell a story of high ideals, collaboration, and passion, the way we operate day-to-day—internally with colleagues, across constituent groups, with our communities—often feels totally misaligned with that story.

I’m not alone in feeling that. Over more than twenty years of professional playing, I saw many attempts to “remake the model” across the field, and participated in a few too. Some of the ideas driving these attempts were good, some were bad, and some were spectacularly bad. There were change projects about programming, about “outreach,” about contracts, about “getting the right people on the bus,” and about Big, Hairy, Audacious Goals. With a few exceptions, after the dust settled most didn’t move the needle fundamentally.

I think it’s because the core stories of the organization remained unchanged. 

Orchestras, like any other institution, are built on stories, and the stories orchestras tell shape their reality. Orchestras coordinate themselves and others with their stories, both explicitly and implicitly. Orchestras tell stories about why they matter, what game they are playing, and why they are winning (or how they will win). 

But, marketing slogans and vision statements aside, orchestras do not give voice to (or in some cases, even know) all the stories they are telling, or could tell. Creating some space to do that was one of the goals of our collaborative imagination workshop.

Our Story about Infrastructure

I was rehearsing in a cooled, empty 2,000-seat hall in Phoenix, wondering how much it costs to maintain this space. Who benefits? Who is this infrastructure serving? I imagined a heat event hitting Phoenix with the force of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, turning Symphony Hall into a crisis shelter, like the Superdome. I wondered: what happens if, after that inflection point, the City of Phoenix (which owns Symphony Hall) reclassified the building as a cooling resource rather than an arts space? What if the Symphony could still use it, but under new rules: no more empty seats at concerts, no more days where the only thing happening is rehearsal while the rest of the building is idle. How would that change us? What would our art become if we had to fill the space in every sense, not just perform in it?

These questions aren’t just about the building—they’re about the systems that sustain and shape orchestras themselves. Orchestras don’t just rely on infrastructure; they are infrastructure. They’ve been part of a system that shapes who belongs and who doesn’t, what’s valued and what’s excluded. Viewing orchestras as infrastructure prompts us to confront the stories they uphold and live inside, and to consider how they could be different inside new stories, or how they themselves might decide to tell new ones—ones that open rather than limit, connect rather than divide.

A Story of Human Coordination

Beyond the networked artistry of the ensemble, the way orchestras are organized today—as divisional bureaucracies—feels increasingly out of step with what we know about effective organizations. This model, which was state-of-the-art in 1966 (when the Ford Foundation made a significant investment in American orchestras), reflects a way of thinking about human coordination that is rooted in hierarchy, rigid divisions, and central control. Since then, we’ve developed and discovered so many alternative approaches to organizing ourselves—ways that are more adaptive, that encourage learning and responsiveness. Yet orchestras remain locked in this 1966 mansion, creaking under the weight of its structure. The resources, including imagination, simply aren’t there to renovate it. And so we stay, working within a system that does not suit the realities of today.

Divisional bureaucracy impacts not only how orchestras function but also how they feel to work in. It’s a system built on clear separations: musicians over here, administrators over there; artistic decisions flowing one way, operations another. It leaves little room for collaboration across these boundaries or for new ideas to emerge naturally. For those of us who work exclusively in these systems, it can feel like being part of a machine built for precision but not for adaptation. The philosophy of this structure shapes how we see ourselves: as parts of a larger mechanism, our value defined by how well we fulfill narrowly prescribed roles. This way of organizing can be limiting, even stifling, when you believe in the need for growth, flexibility, and shared learning.

But orchestras tell an even larger story about human coordination. The design of the ensemble itself—one person leading, every chair turned toward them—reflects a kind of authoritarian ideal. It’s a story of centralized control, where power is held by one individual and everyone else follows. This narrative shapes not just our internal systems but also what we project to the world: an often joyless image of hierarchical order, tradition, and discipline. What if orchestras could show us not just how to perform together but how to live and work together differently? What if we’re uniquely positioned to model that transition?

Orchestras as a Public Good

While orchestras have been good to me, I’ve often wrestled with the way we celebrate how they serve the public without acknowledging where they fall short. There are pressing stories about how orchestras perpetuate exclusion and inequity. Reimagining orchestras as public resources, like libraries, parks, or schools, would change how they operate, who they are responsible to, how success is measured, where they site their work. Community engagement, collaboration, and equitable access would become the focus, connecting orchestras more deeply with the people around them and possibly leading to more unique, differentiated organizations structured in response to local needs. 

This shift would require us to rethink how orchestras are funded and redefine their role in fostering creativity, inclusion, and civic responsibility. In this model, decisions about access, participation, and programming would be shaped by a new set of peers and standards—those of institutions like libraries and parks. What would it mean for orchestras to be placed alongside organizations that prioritize access, inclusion, and public service? 

Playing Games in Orchestras

Through it all, I’ve enjoyed the game of orchestra. Not just the game of playing in an orchestra, but also the game of trying to figure them out as organizations, trying to figure out how to lever them into being different. I wish, in my performing career, I could’ve found more playmates for that game! I’m grateful for the ones I have had, particularly the new and old friends on this project. If we could play just a slightly different game of orchestra, adopt slightly different constraints and objectives, it would change everything. 

Early on, Ed framed this book’s essential question: How do our embodied and cultural roles as performers and artists—enactors of aesthetic memories and futures—need to be reimagined and centered?

I love this question. It captures the ritual, self-seriousness, and slight mystery of what we do: realizing maps and recipes for vibrating air. “Embodied role” brings to mind the ensemble; “cultural role” evokes the organization. “Performers” makes me think of the whole spectacle, while “artists” points to those rare moments of transcendence. And “enactors of aesthetic memories and futures”? A pretty cool, inviting description of what we do, if you ask me.

In the pages that follow, you have the opportunity to hear from the incredibly talented and diverse group of people that met and played with this question in April 2023: musicians, educators, arts leaders, policymakers, physicians, engineers, and more. They offer a wide range of answers, reflections, and stories in response to Ed’s question, which I invite you to dig into. But before we hear from my friends and colleagues, here’s my short take: 

I think seeing ourselves as learning organizations, not just performing ones, is the foundational shift we need to make in how we tell the story of what an orchestra exemplifies, and what it’s truly here to do. 

Our emphasis on performance and expertise often makes us defensive, closed off to new possibilities and necessary feedback. American professional orchestras carry too many settled assumptions and ideas—about what makes music “art,” for instance—that they frame as objective truths, but which are, in fact, learned ideas. Seeing ourselves as learning organizations doesn’t mean we’ll perform less; in fact, we might even perform more. No one values or needs these jobs more than the people who already hold them. I believe that our capacity for learning and reflection as organizations will be the key to what happens next.

Here’s the good news: professional orchestras are full of people who are excellent learners—perhaps that’s what they’re best at. Think 10,000 hours of deliberate practice, analyzing and processing feedback, “listening to the tape,” making adjustments, and on and on. But these master learners are trapped in a single story of timelessness and expertise, a story where saying “I don’t know” feels like a threat rather than an opportunity. Changing that narrative is the next, most elegant step in answering Ed’s question, embracing our identities as enactors of aesthetic memories and futures, and working to fully understand what that truly means.

With that, I’m revealing one of the stories behind this book and, if I’m honest, much of my professional practice: a desire to catalyze and support a culture of learning and development in orchestras. I know you will find the stories and essays that follow fascinating, inspiring, and worth puzzling over. I hope you will puzzle over them with others, in ensemble. 

American professional orchestras don’t lack ideas on how to be different—what we need are stories of how we became different. It’s not destinations we’re missing; it’s maps, and rules for new games. 

Let’s play.

How We Made This

By Alex Laing, Joey Eschrich, and Ed Finn

Orchestras across the United States face challenges relative to relevance, access, representation, and sustainability. Can we reimagine orchestras as vibrant spaces for connection, shared learning, and exploring new modes of creative expression, without compromising their role as purveyors of rich aesthetic experiences? How can orchestras be truly responsive to the needs of their communities, and truly in service to the people around them? Can we envision orchestras being embedded in their communities, not standing apart from them or hailing only a privileged fraction? Could orchestras be more humane and enriching spaces for the people who work in and around them? And perhaps most importantly, what is the future of the orchestra? Will these institutions reinvent themselves and find new social and cultural vitality, or will they recede ever further into the enclaves of the elite?

These questions, and many others besides, animate the Sound Systems project. This effort is supported by grants from the Sphinx Organization—an arts organization based in Detroit, Michigan, focused on supporting Black and Latino artists in classical music—and the Flinn Foundation, which works across art, biosciences, and education to improve the quality of life in Arizona to benefit future generations. It is led by the editors of this book: Alex Laing, a longtime professional orchestra musician and the president and artistic director of Gateways Music Festival; Ed Finn, a researcher on imagination and futures and founding director of the Center for Science and the Imagination (CSI) at Arizona State University; and Joey Eschrich, managing editor at CSI. 

The process of conceptualizing and assembling this book began with a two-day speculative futures workshop in April 2023, hosted at CSI’s office on Arizona State University’s campus in Tempe, Arizona. The event brought together nearly all of the contributors to this volume: musicians, science fiction authors, engineers, arts administrators, scholars, educators, composers, and thinkers from fields including music learning and public health. 

The structure of the workshop parallels the structure of the book—we brought together our participants in four small teams, each oriented toward a different lens through which to view the definition of an orchestra, and the scope of its social functions: Orchestra as Public Good, Orchestra as Game, Orchestra as Network, and Orchestra as Infrastructure.

Following the model we developed with earlier CSI books, including the solar-futures collections The Weight of Light (2019) and Cities of Light (2021), we designed a variety of group activities and “creative sprints” over the course of our two days together. These included:

• Short presentations and musical interludes; 
• Collaborative brainstorming with whiteboards and sticky notes; 
• Small-group working sessions focused on defining possible futures for the orchestra, and building speculative-fiction narratives to dramatize those futures;
• Report-outs to share progress through these stages of collaborative imagination; 
• Large-group discussions and feedback sessions; 
• A few curveballs, in the form of decks of cards that introduced additional narrative elements, ranging from generative AI technologies to climate change, challenges with economic inequality, and demands for racial equity;
• A field trip to explore spatial audio experiences with Garth Paine, a composer, scholar, and acoustic ecologist at Arizona State University’s School of Arts, Media and Engineering. 

This blend of creative constraints, blue-sky thinking, and apertures for mind-wandering and freewheeling conversation are typical of our approach to futures, which we call “collaborative imagination.” The intention is not to predict the future, but rather to practice a new kind of hopeful and inclusive relationship with the future. Or, to put it another way, we seek to build the imaginative capacity of our participants and our collective audiences to imagine how the world might be otherwise, and what futures we should work towards in the present. 

Our four teams each left the workshop with the skeleton of a speculative fiction narrative that envisioned one of many possible futures for orchestras, plus a set of ideas for essays that would contextualize, illuminate, expand upon, and unpack various artistic, social, cultural, legal, and technological aspects of that vision of the future. 

Over the months after the workshop, we worked with each participant to craft their written contribution, through several rounds of conversation, writing, revising, rethinking, and polishing. We also commissioned Shachi Kale, an amazing artist and designer based in Arizona, to create an original piece of art to accompany and reflect on the writing in each of the book’s four sections. 

Together, we hope that these stories, essays, and art will provide a language for thinking about the future of orchestras, as well as intellectual and creative scaffolding for conversations among musicians, arts leaders, and communities. 

This book is not intended to predict the future of orchestras, or to provide a map or flow chart for institutional reorganization. However, we hope that it informs and inspires conversations about transformative change, transporting us to possible futures that we may want to build together—or that spur further imaginative thinking, lighting different pathways forward that are uniquely suited to particular municipalities, communities, and environments.