2026 Sessions: Plant-Based - Growing Connections and Breaking Boundaries
In 2026, the Cortona Sessions takes its cue from the natural world, where thriving and resilient ecosystems are built from interdependence and diversity. Plant-Based: Growing Connections and Breaking Boundaries celebrates the art of cultivation: planting the seeds of collaboration, nurturing growth through experimentation, and harvesting the creative fruits of our collective labor.
Set against the quiet simplicity and lush surroundings of Ede, the Sessions draw inspiration from the landscape itself. The fields and forests that frame our work remind us that creativity, like nature, requires patience, balance, and attentive care. Here, growth is both literal and metaphorical: new ideas take root in shared “soil”, nourished and tended by curiosity and collaboration.
Throughout the Sessions, fellows and faculty will explore the full life cycle of artistic creation:
Planting: generating new ideas through cross-disciplinary partnerships with local Dutch organizations and artists
Incubating: allowing new projects to take root across performance, education, and community spaces
Composting: breaking down outdated or exclusionary practices in the field
Pollinating: sharing our work and ideas beyond traditional boundaries
Weeding: identifying and removing harmful norms in new music to cultivate empathy, sustainability, and creative freedom
In this spirit, the Sessions will feature repertoire and professional development that mirror these organic processes, highlighting works by composers who blur boundaries between genres, cultures, and artistic mediums. From Louis Andriessen to Pamela Z to Allison Loggins-Hull, the 2026 Sessions will feature voices that challenge conventions and remind us that growth, like art, is never linear.
A major highlight is our 2026 Special Guest Artist, Tonia Ko, whose work is known for its tactile sensitivity, inventive use of materials, and ability to reveal musical potential in the everyday. Throughout the Sessions, she will be deeply embedded in the community: workshopping her pieces with our performers, offering insights into the technical and expressive demands of her music, and leading frank, thoughtful conversations with composers and fellows.
Through performances, community collaborations, and conversations around curation and context (“Right plant, right place”), we’ll explore how artistic practice can itself be an act of ecological imagination, tending to the soil from which future work will grow.
– Anthony R Green and Michael Compitello, Artistic Co-Directors of the 2026 Cortona Sessions for New Music
Applications are open now! Cortona Prize applications are due December 29, and Cortona Sessions Applications are due Feburary 1. Click here for more info.