Millennial America

Peter Sachon: Orchestras need to offer compelling reasons for millennials to make live symphonic music a part of their lives. After all, millennials are the largest generation in human history, and at nearly 90 million people they will very soon make up the vast majority of our orchestras’ stakeholders, constituents, audience, staff members and supporters – and instrumentalists. By 2017, they will surpass the buying power of the baby boomer generation. There is simply no generation in the next forty years that will have the size and potential purchasing power to influence American orchestras more than millennials. While orchestras aren’t the only institutions that have abandoned the young, they can still be among the first to reclaim them — and in so doing they can begin to reclaim the position of live orchestral music in American culture.