Making as a shared act

There is a story about the artist as a lonely genius. Alone in a studio, creating in silence, needing no one. It is a romantic idea. But it is mostly not true. The greatest works of art almost always involve other people. Other voices, other eyes, other hands.

Collaboration is not a compromise. It is not about giving up your ideas so that someone else can add theirs. Real collaboration is something stranger and more exciting. It is about finding out what happens when two or more people bring their full selves to the same table and agree to be changed by what they find there.

When a composer writes music for a specific musician, something happens that could not have happened otherwise. When a dancer responds to a piece of music and the musician begins to change the music in response. That is collaboration. That is a living thing.

Palette of Sounds is built on this belief. We bring together musicians, dancers, visual artists, and educators, people from different disciplines and different parts of the world because what they make together will be more alive than anything they could have made apart.