John Adams will lead Leila Josefowicz and the Cincinnati Symphony in his striking new work Scheherazade.2 next week. The dedicated page on the Cincinnati's website provokes a wry smile. Adams is at least sufficiently well known that his name gets in the headline. I appreciate, of course, the challenges of marketing new music to mainstream audiences, and am happy to see that Cincinnati has taken on Adams's big new piece. They have a strong track record with contemporary music generally — witness the Music Now Festival. But the emphasis on Respighi seems strange, to say the least. The new work should be the lead story. More on Scheherazade.2 and the travails of contemporary orchestral writing here.