This was an instructive, challenging, and overall helpful conversation. I especially appreciated your focus on the two questions, (and I’ll paraphrase): 1) Will it be ok to have a non-resident music director? 2) How can we choose the right candidate after a year of watching and listening to nine different candidates? Dr. Rosen and Mr. Fogel both addressed those questions in clear and comprehensive ways that were helpful to me and should be helpful to others. Several of their ideas were ones that I had before; others were new to me and reassuring. And Julie was an excellent moderator of the discussion. Thanks to you all, and thanks to the search committee that has worked so hard and well and continues to do so.

Thank you for this podcast. While I still defer to orchestra members having a major say, I now realize that that may not be a sure thing. As for me, I enjoyed both concerts so far. The orchestra sounded good and reinforced the need to hear music live. The only concern with overweighting audience preference is if the tilt may be due to popularity or familiarity of certain pieces of music rather than the balance and creativity of an entire program. By the way, Mr. Fogel might be interested in knowing that I was season ticket holder (well, the 10-concert season package) with the CSO during the Solti years. I actually enjoyed many of the more innovative programs (think ‘Final Alice’ by David Del Tredici) rather than some of the slam- bang audience pleasers. (Oh, also enjoyed Mr. Fogel’s program of vintage classical recordings on WFMT.)

Thank you so much for the wonderful coverage and opportunities to get to know more about the finalists and the process. This session was really very good about the director maybe not living here. I appreciate the wider view and the reality of directors' lives. Champaign Urbana maybe thought Steve Larsen lived there.