What if this was a once-in-a-generation opportunity to make real change to classical music? What if, following a period in which our worlds became smaller than ever before, we embraced broader horizons, radical ideas and new worlds? The time has never been better, the circumstances never more conducive to change. Our cultural worlds have been flipped upside down: we can now go to performances from the comfort of our sofa, explore concert halls we have never set foot in, and even try before we buy. We have learned new ways of using digital technology — not just online but on the concert platform too — and begun to test the opportunities of multi-media and multi-artform collaborations that enhance and diversify our artform, rather than dilute it.

This diversification is an opportunity, not a sideshow. Even before the pandemic there was a growing awareness for greater representation and diversity on the concert platform — correcting hundreds of years of bias towards white, male composers, and uncovering a treasure trove of under-performed music — but the Black Lives Matter movement has sharpened our senses and strengthened our resolve. And haven’t we discovered, along the way, that audiences are far more open-minded than we once thought?

Errollyn Wallen's Dido’s Ghost 'invites us to hear contemporary music as part of a vital and evolving continuum'

At Dunedin Consort we have begun to test the boundaries of what it means to be an ‘early music ensemble’, to stretch our audience’s imagination and diversify our repertoire. Last year, we commissioned a new opera from Errollyn Wallen and Wesley Stace which reframes and reinterprets Purcell’s Dido & Aeneas. It asks: What if Dido’s death wasn’t the end of the story? Dido’s Ghost interrogates the past rather than abandoning it, it invites us to hear contemporary music as part of a vital and evolving continuum. That familiarity gives audiences a hook, a way in. Yes, it was composed by a living, black, female composer — that in itself is an historic and important thing — but that was not the starting point for the commission. The starting point was a great artistic idea. And after all, isn’t that what we are all looking for? Over the next three years we will be exploring where else this idea can take us, and putting three more baroque forms — the concerto, the cantata, the Passion — in the hands of three pioneering, contemporary composers to see which new horizons this opens up.

But there is much more to all this than just creating new music. An opera is still an opera, a concerto is still a concerto. What happens when we juxtapose different artforms, or use digital technology creatively to extend and develop what we do? In our flagship film project, A Lover’s Discourse (which premieres in May), we pair modern translations of Roland Barthes’ recitations on love with madrigals by Monteverdi and Gesualdo, a new score by Pippa Murphy, and a specially commissioned film capturing the grit and grandeur of Scotland’s outdoor spaces. The theme (love) is timeless and universal, but the collision of media invites new perspectives — how can we hear, see and feel differently when we connect with the past in new ways?

We are not the only ones to be shaking things up, of course, but it is noticeable how much more agile and committed smaller organisations like Manchester Collective, Scottish Ensemble, Britten Sinfonia and Aurora Orchestra (to name just a handful) have been with their programming, while many of the larger symphony orchestras still lag woefully behind. The argument that audiences won’t come simply doesn’t hold water – how else to explain three near-sell-out nights of our new opera at Edinburgh International Festival last summer? Shouldn’t we give our audiences more credit than that?

While the days of Overture-Concerto-Symphony are already beginning to fade from view, there is so much more still to be done. This is not a conversation about fulfilling quotas or ticking boxes but about enacting meaningful diversity across the repertoire through imaginative and creative programming that is truly representative of the modern world. It is not about discarding the old, but about refreshing and reframing it. It is about great ideas and thoughtful collaborations. It is not just about asking: What do audiences want? But about asking: What do musicians want to perform? What do composers want to write? What do promoters want to present? And what can we offer as a creative sector that will surprise, delight and inspire them all?

Jo Buckley is the Chief Executive of the Dunedin Consort and recently elected board member of the Association of British Orchestras (ABO). The Classical Music industry will gather in Glasgow on Wednesday 9 Feb for the three-day ABO conference, where Jo will lead a conversation with other organisations on the need to balance their roles as guardians of the historical canon with the need to play works of relevance to the communities they serve.