Step out of your genre to fix what your genre lacks.

principle — attributed to J. Francisco Núñez

Núñez found the children's choral repertoire was limited. Handel's Hallelujah was written for adults. Mozart's requiem was written for adults. He stepped outside the choral world into the concert world and asked four major composers (Torke, Taverner, Kats-Chernin, Kroll-Rosenbaum) to write new work for children. The first answers were no. Education composers got stigmatized. Núñez persisted, and the four pieces got written and published. The principle is that collaboration sometimes means leaving your own genre and entering another. The genre you came from had limits the genre next door does not. The work you bring back changes both genres.

For arts leaders, program directors, and creative entrepreneurs whose field has structural limits the leaders of adjacent fields could help solve. The principle is most useful when in-genre solutions have been exhausted.

genre-stepping, cross-discipline, collaboration, repertoire-expansion