Nominate a Guest for Season 7: Culture and Courage!

What does it mean to pursue excellence as an artist today? It's more than mastering repertoire or earning recognition. It's creating work with depth, originality, perspective, and purpose. That's the question guiding Season 7 of The Piano Pod with Yukimi Song with Yukimi Song. And for me, it begins with two words: culture and courage. Culture changes how we see. It reminds us that our own experience is not the only lens for understanding what is beautiful, meaningful, or artistic. Culture is curiosity, context, discernment, and the willingness to be shaped by people, places, histories, and ideas beyond our own familiar world. And courage is what allows culture to become action. It's the courage to step beyond the supposed-tos: the expected career, the expected repertoire, role, and the expected path. For Season 7, I am looking for artists who embody this kind of excellence. Artists who build something new, artists who challenge inherited expectations, artists who experiment, explore, and imagine new futures for our field. Season 7 will feature monthly conversations centered on culture and courage, more in-depth conversations, more intentional curation. If you know an artist, educator, composer, innovator, entrepreneur, or creative leader whose work embodies culture and courage. Or if that person is you, I invite you to nominate them. Season 7 begins this September. Culture and courage.