Orchestras and democracy make for unconventional bedfellows. Most run on top-down choices made by conductors and general managers. What chance does democracy have in such a setup? This chapter opens with a portrait of the orchestra as an organisation. It maps the factors determining who gets employed and on what terms, asset ownership, quality control, and the nature of work in an orchestra. The investigation next turns to the basic features of labour-management and how they apply in the world of music performance. Theorists have identified conditions that support control by workers in general while also warning of a degenerative risk embedded in such forms of organisation. The chapter’s overall ambition is to establish the extent to which orchestras and labour-management fruitfully align. Are democratically organised orchestras faced with a square-peg-round-hole problem? Are orchestras ripe for democratisation? Or is the reality somewhere in between? The chapter gives readers a theoretical perspective on overlaps between orchestras and ideas of labour-management and sets up the theoretical framework for the empirical discussions of the later chapters.