One of the biggest challenges of programming an orchestra’s season is finding a reliable way to gauge the interest’s of a local audience. Even in an industry so dominated by a “standard repertoire,” the tastes of concertgoers vary widely from city to city, and what goes over brilliantly in New York may well flop 100 miles down the road in Philadelphia. “Theories abound about what formulates and maintains local taste – theories nearly as disputable as they are defendable. The collective consciousness of any community isn’t all that collective and is constantly shifting. The theory that seems to carry the most weight is ethnicity.”