(The Shared Baton) Artistic Leadership Is Public Responsibility
People often describe conducting in creative terms: vision, interpretation, inspiration.
Those words matter.
But they are not the core of the job.
Artistic leadership is a public role. It comes with delegated responsibility over other people’s time, labor, and trust—musicians’ livelihoods, staff capacity, donor confidence, and an institution’s credibility in the community. The podium is not a private studio. It is a public position.
That distinction matters because creativity alone is not leadership.
Responsibility is.
