How an Orchestra's Experiment with AI Can Make for a Better Democracy

This election season, orchestras in Los Angeles, Boston, and Leipzig, Germany have been using music to talk about democracy. They held concerts, community events, and even used artificial intelligence to get people thinking about freedom and voting. At the same time, musicians in some orchestras have been demanding more say in how their own workplaces are run. The mix of music and democracy turns out to be older — and messier — than most people expect.

The word 'symphony' comes from Greek and means 'sounding in agreement,' while 'democracy' means 'rule by the people.' Even though orchestras were first created for kings and princes, they have long been tied to the idea of giving power to ordinary people. Composer Ludwig van Beethoven showed this as far back as 1804, when he removed Napoleon's name from his 'Eroica' Symphony. He did it because Napoleon had declared himself emperor, which Beethoven saw as a betrayal of the people's freedom.

In Los Angeles, a group called Wild Up led a series of events called the 'Democracy Sessions' throughout October and up to Election Day. These included concerts, outdoor performances, and community gatherings at museums, parks, libraries, and along the L.A. River. The series ended with 'Music to Vote By,' a set of free solo performances held at noon at the Japanese American National Museum Plaza in Little Tokyo. The goal was not to change people's minds, but to ease what organizers called 'democracy anxiety.'

Wild Up is led by conductor Christopher Rountree, who started the group with a vision of music that everyone could join. One major event was a performance of 'De Staat' by composer Louis Andriessen, in which singers performed words by the ancient philosopher Plato. Plato had once warned that music could change the laws of the state, but Andriessen's piece argued he was wrong. Another event, called 'Garland,' invited community members to sing alongside professional musicians, and even featured a live black horse making a surprise appearance inside a museum.

In Germany, Leipzig's historic Gewandhaus Orchestra held a democracy weekend called 'Reading the Signs' just before a local election. A far-right political party had recently won power in a nearby state, and the weekend encouraged people to think carefully instead of falling for simple answers or conspiracy theories. An improvising orchestra called Stegreif performed a bold, reworked version of Beethoven's 'Eroica' Symphony. The message was clear: look to art and history, not fear, when times get hard.

In Boston, the Boston Symphony Orchestra premiered a new piece that mixed live music with artificial intelligence. The work, called 'already and not yet,' was written by composer Tod Machover and performed just two weeks before the midterm elections. Machover is a professor at MIT's Media Lab, a research center that helped develop modern AI. The piece was created to mark the lab's 40th anniversary and to ask big questions about technology and human creativity.

In the piece, AI did not take over — the musicians stayed in charge. An AI operator named Manaswi Mishra sat within the orchestra and sent musical ideas to the players, but each musician decided what to do with those ideas. The piece had three movements: 'SMASH UP,' 'WAKE UP,' and 'STAND UP.' By the final movement, the music became joyful and free, with the AI fully under the musicians' control.

Conductor Kent Nagano led the performance and could turn off the AI any time he felt it was not helping. He said afterward that the orchestra was always willing to try new things. Machover's goal was to show that AI does not have to threaten human creativity or democracy. Instead, he used it as a simple tool — one that listens and responds, but leaves the real decisions to people.

However, the concert night was not without tension. Many BSO musicians wore red flowers on their jackets as a sign of protest against the orchestra's management. Their music director, Andris Nelsons, had not had his contract renewed after 13 years, and the musicians felt left out of that decision. They wanted more of a voice in how the orchestra is run — they wanted their own workplace to be more democratic.

Nelsons did not take part in the democracy-themed concerts in either Boston or Leipzig, where he also works as music director. In Leipzig, he led a program of familiar pieces by Tchaikovsky and Dvorak that had nothing to do with the democracy weekend. Critics pointed out that both cities are home to many young people and growing technology industries that could have been part of the conversation. Whether orchestras can truly live up to their democratic ideals — both on stage and behind the scenes — is still an open question.