This community often seems to be in search of itself. Are we a sports town? A high-tech town? An arts center? A medical center? Conservative? Liberal? Stodgy? Cutting edge?

We can be several of those things at once, of course. But our persona is often defined by community leaders. And right now, some of those community leaders are defining us as a backwater town - a place where we thumb our noses at the LGBT community, let politicians pick college presidents, and think the arts don't matter.

I've mentioned this before, and I don't mean to harp on it. But we've got a wealth of talent - particularly in the arts - and some community leaders keep turning their backs on it. In their view, the arts are "elitist." They get rid of important art at the airport, and push for a theater for Broadway shows but not one for classical music or dance.

So I hope they took note of a clear demonstration of the importance of the arts in this community last night: the sold-out house at the Eastman Theatre.

More than 3000 people turned out for the RPO concert. The big attraction, of course, was superstar cellist Yo-Yo Ma. But Ma didn't perform until the second half of the program. And the audience was almost as enthusiastic about the first half, which featured Kodaly's "Variations on a Hungarian Folk Song."

This is Rochester, just as much as the crowds at a soccer game or a hockey game. (The raucous applause for Ma last night kind of reminded me of the reaction of sports crowds, frankly.) And the arts - the RPO, the Eastman School, the Memorial Art Gallery and Geva and Garth Fagan - will draw people to live here. They will, in fact, draw the people we want to work at our high-tech companies and medical centers.

Maybe some community leaders want to live in a backwater town. The 3000-plus people who packed the Eastman Theatre last night do not.