I work with a small music festival in Oregon, USA
(http://www.brittfest.org).  We present a three-week orchestral festival
every August and are interested in finding a guest speaker for our 2000
festival.

Specifically, we hope to find a professional musician or academic who could
deliver a well-crafted presentation about how the symphony, as a musical
form, is structured (we'd focus on the late 18th century--Mozart, Haydn).
We'd probably want to pick one work in particular as the foundation for
musical examples, etc.

The trick here is that we'd like to find somebody who is, of course,
knowledgable and credible, but is also very good with lay audiences.  Our
audience for this presentation will be adults who are primarily not big CM
fans.  So outstanding speaking skills, sense of humor, passion, and the
ability to distill complex information is essential.

Any suggestions? Pianist Robert Levin is one name we're considering.  He
performed with us a few years ago.  And he did very well, I thought, on
the recent PBS composers series (he was featured speaking at the keyboard
throughout the Mozart program).  Don't know if he's into these kinds of
things or not, though.  Any other names come to mind?

Thanks!

Arthur Wait
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