What is Orchestra Management? -- Internal Relationships -- Steering the Ship -- Community Relationships -- Artistic Planning -- Financial Management -- Building Sustaining Relationships -- Marketing and Public Relations -- Toward Relevance -- From the Field.

As the only major orchestra without a conductor, Orpheus Chamber Orchestra is a shining example of a highly effective management style based on collaborative leadership. Leadership Ensemble is designed to show business leaders in any industry how to re-create the successful "Orpheus Process" in their own companies by dismantling top-heavy hierarchies; developing flexible, responsive strategies and decision-making procedures; and unleashing employee creativity, responsibility, and productivity. The authors delineate the eight core principles of collaborative management, including shared and rotated leadership, passionate dedication to mission, clarity of roles within an organization, and learning to listen. Spiced with anecdotes and case studies, Leadership Ensemble is an entertaining, practical guide to survival in today's speed-of-light business environment.

Every orchestra in the world oscillates between crisis and survival. This perpetual movement makes innovation, both in organizational form and in artistic product, vital to the sustainability of the symphony orchestra. Based on case study research in Flanders, Amsterdam and London, this book reflects on the sustainability crisis of the orchestra by framing it as a legitimacy crisis that affects both the orchestra’s artistic and organizational identity. The aim of this book is to explore the dynamics between various and often conflicting factors in the orchestra’s quest for survival, and to show how these organizational dynamics relate to the orchestra’s repertoire. By highlighting the importance of every organization’s specific environment to which it needs to adapt, this book illustrates that the orchestra field is not a field that relies on best practices. The book reflects on conventional as well as innovative orchestra models, making the comparative point of view relevant for academic or practice-based researchers, orchestra managers, policymakers and subsidizing bodies interested in sustainable and future-oriented orchestra management.