Good morning.

The day after our new season’s opening concert, my dear friend Sylvia McNair asked how I was feeling.

I told her, “Overwhelmingly positive.”

Then she asked, “Are you happy?”

I said, “Not only am I happy, but I know Nashville is exactly where I should be.”

Two days later, that joy came crashing down.

After one of the most extraordinary opening weeks in this orchestra’s history, I could hardly comprehend that the promise we had just felt so vividly could be interrupted so abruptly.

Joy became sadness. Exhilaration became emptiness.

Those of us who joined this organization during the past year believed that, despite the financial challenges, we would not merely survive—we would thrive. We made plans. We imagined what this orchestra could become.

And now, suddenly, that future is in jeopardy.

I ask this board today to recognize the urgency of this moment and to act—not only as stewards of an institution, but as guardians of something that belongs to this entire community.

Think first of our musicians. They are among the finest in the country. If this orchestra disappears for a year, many of them will go elsewhere. We will lose the quality you have all come to expect. It is not possible to replace a season of music-making with a promise that we will return someday with a potentially lesser organization.

Think of our audience. Think of the young people whose lives change when they hear a great orchestra for the first time. Think of our extraordinary chorus. Think of this magnificent hall.

If the orchestra is silent, all of that is silent.

And Nashville deserves better.

Perhaps we should remember Dolly Parton’s words: “If you want the rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain.”

Well, we are in the rain.

But the rainbow is still possible.

As for me, this will clearly be my final music directorship. But I will not abandon this orchestra. I am not going anywhere unless I can no longer maintain and grow its level of musicianship.

As I told Sylvia, I am exactly where I should be—with the Nashville Symphony, its musicians, and this community.

In two weeks, I will return to conduct what might, for now, be the final concerts of this season. I don’t know what the atmosphere will be like. But I do know how we must make music.

Leonard Bernstein once said, during a crisis in our country, “We must make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever. We will do exactly that, because for us, the music comes first.”

Today, I ask this board to do the same.

You must support the Nashville Symphony more intensely, with more commitment, and more devotedly than ever.

That is the challenge before you.

This is Nashville.

This is Music City.

And Nashville needs its orchestra.

Thank you.