For as long as I have played classical music, I have heard that it is a dying art form. Fortunately, I have been blessed with a career that has offered an abundance of concerts around the world, where I could observe from my seat in the orchestra that nothing could be further from the truth. From Tanglewood to Tokyo, on world tours with the Israel Philharmonic and in other great orchestras, I have been a keenly interested observer of audiences responding with open hearts to our performances across cultural boundaries. Aware of the challenges to classical music, economic downturns, technological transformations of society, changing habits and norms, and most dire of all, today’s political culture wars that seek to erase the past. I resolved that the problem of classical music’s future deserved to be studied as a vital and imperative principle. There needed to be at least one organization to bring together the best and brightest minds to take up this challenge, to ultimately orchestrate a renaissance for classical music.
It is for this purpose that I founded the Foundation for the Future of Classical Music.