Reddit mentions of Adams: Harmonielehre; The Chairman Dances; Tromba Lontana; Short Ride in a Fast Machine

The Top 100 Box Set is a pretty good collection of a wide variety of compositions over the course of several hundred years.

A few other pieces of music I'd recommend:

John Adams has some pretty cool pieces. It's more accessible than a lot of the atonal and minimalist stuff you see in modern music.

I'm also a fan of Alan Hovhaness, who is also considered modern; one of the most notable features of his music is the blending Eastern and Western styles to produce beautiful pieces.

I'd also check out eclassical.com, which I use for a majority of my music file purchases, since the prices are pretty good and you can buy tracks individually, as well as having a very wide variety of music to choose from.

I don't know man, we put on a good 2500+ person free show, maxed the out the venue.

Also for the outdoor concerts we can get a few thousand people.

Since orchestras can't tour easily doing free media everywhere isn't going to help them as much as a band that tours.

Band tour models don't work well for orchestras, because of cost of transportation. Also most orchestras don't do CD sales. Once again it's to expensive. Unless you are one of the big 5 orchestras in the US it will probably be a significant loss of revenue, and since new market members have a hard time differentiating between all the information such as, orchestra, guest artist/soloist conductor composer, it alternatively doesn't' bring that many people in. Free concerts are more effective for that and costs a significant amount less, and generates more revenue, and gets people to fill the seats and tell their friends about it.

PS:

Here is an example of why CDs can be confusing for new audience members:
John Adams: Harmonielehre / The Chairman Dances / Tromba lontana / Short Ride in a Fast Machine by Jonathan Holland, Wesley Warren, John Adams, Simon Rattle and City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra (1994)

What that says is: Composer: name of piece/ name of piece/ name of piece, soloist, soloist, composer, conductor, orchestra.


That's not going to be great promotion for people to go see shows, particularly since the orchestra might only play that show with that conductor 4 times.

Vs. a band CD that says: Band name, Album title. The band then goes on tour with the release of a new album, and promotes it. Simple easy to remember, and the band will play your area only once.