One of the biggest fears in the performing arts world in recent years has been about demographics. Look around the audience for a classical music concert at the Hult Center, and you see a lot of gray hair.

As a result, many performing groups — especially in the fine arts — in recent years have started talking about the need to get more young people into their audiences to fill seats as older audience members die.

Not everyone in the business agrees with this.

“We’ve been talking for five or six decades about how audiences are dying off,” says Dave Moss, executive director of Eugene Symphony. “I personally think that’s a myth.”

Moss became executive director in January 2024. Under his leadership, the symphony has been reframing the question of demographics. The problem is not, he says,

See Full Page