Chapter 4 tells the story of my courting and then hiring film composer and conductor John Williams to succeed Fiedler at the Boston Pops. While already well-known for his scores to Jaws, Star Wars, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and Superman, he was a surprise choice to the orchestra world. We shared five years collaborating as he successfully transformed himself from a studio musician into a public performer. It was during this period that I learned sobering lessons about managing the BSO, resulting in my eventual departure, disillusioned with both myself and the field.

Chapter 5 describes the pivot point of meeting composer-conductor Pierre Boulez, an unrelenting advocate of 20th-century music. We collaborated on a project that served as a powerful wakeup call on the significance of unambiguous artistic principles and showed what working with a great artist with idealist fervor could be like. It was an event that dramatically altered my trajectory, and it cemented a friendship and collaboration that lasted almost thirty-five years.

Chapter 6, the first of two chapters that frame my years running The Cleveland Orchestra, centers on Ward Smith, the organization’s board president. His persuasive clarity drew me back into running a large institution —for all the right reasons and at the right time. He demonstrated how the structural ambiguities of having co-equal leaders, a music director and an executive director, can be made to work productively. In the process, he gave me a graduate degree in how boards can and must be effective.

Chapter 7 describes my 15-year partnership with Christoph von Dohnányi, Cleveland’s music director. The longest ongoing collaboration of my career, it was extraordinarily productive and rewarding, thanks primarily to our shared embrace of goals and purpose. Together we fundamentally reshaped the institution’s image in a textbook case of creative partnership in all its strengths but also, in the final years, its fragilities.

Chapter 8 is about my meeting Jim Collins, best-selling business author of Built to Last and Good to Great. He opened my eyes to the broader principles underlying organizational and individual success at just the moment I was yearning for such understanding. His encouragement and perspective helped guide my decision to leave what was becoming an unfulfilling executive vocation for a more flexible life of multiple endeavors and creative outlets.

Chapter 9 focuses on the first of two key projects in which Morris’ creative energies flourished – Spring for Music, which he and two partners created Carnegie Hall to showcase creative programming with a broad spectrum of North American ensembles.

Chapter 10 tells of his sixteen years as artistic director of the Ojai Music Festival – in reality, a series of annual creative partnerships with extraordinary and varied artists serving successively as music directors.

Chapter 11 draws on draws on everything I have learned and reflects on the current state of orchestras and musical creativity –  a state today that is a paradox, both perilous and hopeful, with a serious disconnect between the calcified world of institutions and the lively and messy cauldron of creativity around them.