Disaster Or Growth?

Of course the hard economic times world wide will affect every nook and cranny of our lives sooner or later, and not only banks and financial institutions will suffer but Orchestras and opera houses will have to bare the consequences as well, down sizing and down glitzing to suit the new train of thought.

Along those lines of thought, even without worry for the major orchestras, museums and Opera companies it is quite certain that the smaller institutions, will be severely hurt, if not demolished.
I am not sure though, that I buy into this tragic line of thought.

I much prefer what Daniel Wolf says:

But what if this moment is one of economic opportunity and not just severe restriction? Let’s have a little vision, now! What if we could re-organize our musical lives in a fundamental way, with the basis not in our music-institutional lives but in music-making at the most local level? In part, I believe that we have already moved in some important ways in this direction. The large corporate recording industry has lost considerable weight and technological advances have made it now possible to produce the most sophisticated recordings and broadcast-equivalents with means modest enough to be available to a middle-class household.

I am in complete agreement, at least as far as the sentiment goes. This is not the first economic crisis the world has endured nor will it be the last, and never before has it resulted in a complete standstill of anything. Where the old establishment and ways fell, the new sprung up like new growth after a forest fire.
Art and music has a way of renewing and reviving themselves in dire stressfull times picking themselves up and dusting of the debry to begin again, in a new and often better way.

Yay for optimism.

I am so tired of hearing about the end of the world and watching people panic, Daniels thoughts are like a breath of fresh air.