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Peter Sellars: The Interdependence of Worlds
Meany Center’s Artistic Partner initiative reflects the belief that the arts are most powerful when they build lasting relationships between artists, ideas and communities. Rather than presenting isolated events, the initiative creates a season-long conversation, inviting audiences to return to evolving themes and artistic voices over time.
In the 2026–27 Season, Meany Center welcomes the return of Peter Sellars as artistic partner. Known for reimagining classical works through a contemporary lens, Sellars examines how art can speak to moral, social and spiritual questions that define our shared world. His collaborations with major composers such as Kaija Saariaho, John Adams and Matthew Aucoin, together with honors including a MacArthur Fellowship and Erasmus Prize, reflect his lasting impact on the performing arts.
Sellars’ multiyear residency at the University of Washington extends beyond performance to include deep engagement with students, faculty, local artists, and Seattle and regional audiences. Through conversations, workshops, gatherings, creative feedback and public talks, he invites us to reflect on the role of the arts in public life — how creative practice can foster empathy, civic responsibility and cross-disciplinary understanding. His time on campus and in Seattle emphasizes exchange rather than presentation, blending dialogue, observation and mentorship as forms of collaboration.
At the heart of Sellars’ 2026–27 residency is Music to Accompany a Departure, his ritual-based staging for the Los Angeles Master Chorale, presented at Meany as the next chapter in a three-part journey that began with Lagrime di San Pietro, presented at Meany in the 2022–23 season. Audiences are invited into a shared space of listening, remembrance and care, where music, text and visual imagery form what Sellars has called “a ceremony of leave-taking for our time.” In this work, many of the season’s central concerns — how we confront loss, listen across differences and imagine more just futures — come into sharp focus. Music to Accompany a Departure stands not only as a singular artistic event but as a vivid expression of the layered, thoughtful and engaging experiences Meany Center seeks to offer audiences throughout the season, in dialogue with Peter Sellars and with every artist who joins this ongoing conversation.
Artist Statement
I am about to go into rehearsal for an astonishing project that will be coming to the Meany Center. What am I thinking about, and what am I hoping for?
The interdependence and interpenetration of worlds.
The challenge and pleasure of being together.
Shared spaces, shared experiences, shared resources, shared access.
Can we help each other to be more honest and more loving?
Create and sustain structures of equality and patterns of reciprocity.
The eloquence of the just.
How the invisible moves.
The groove.
Hidden beauty.
Secret histories.
Life inside the contradictions.
Imagine the alternatives.
Organize the alternatives.
Be a bridge.
Understand the humor.
Understand the hurt.
Where is the love?
Walk with ancestors.
Run with the unborn.
Listen to plants.
Listen to the weather.
Listen to the inner weather.
Listen to people.
Listen to music.
Hear the unspoken.
Hear inner voices.
Hear your inner voices.
Hear what you don't want to hear.
Ask the questions.
Not knowing the answers.
Acknowledge your mistakes.
Address your regrets.
Do the healing work.
See with the third eye.
Look through obstacles.
Honor your intuitions.
The near is far.
The far is near.
Be generous.
Find courage together.
Don't surrender to anger.
Feel what you are feeling.
Feel it more deeply.
Open the dream space.
We are here.
Everything I do involves working with others, and across many years I have had the pleasure of working with exceptional artists from many disciplines, cultures, geographies and spiritual orientations who bear many gifts from many worlds, and who create new communities of sound, action and light.
And for some years I have been telling myself that I would love to spend more time in Seattle. Now, thanks to the Meany Center and Michelle Witt, this dream will become reality. I am so grateful.
— Peter Sellars