This is the gallery where the instruments come alive. Sit down, look up, and listen. 

Through film, you will witness what happens when a musician and an instrument find each other completely: the way a master’s hands know exactly where to go, the way sound fills a room and changes the air inside it, the way a single performance can hold an entire human life. These are the players who took the instruments made and distributed by an industry, and used them to say something that could not be said any other way. 

Some of what you see here will be familiar. Some of it will surprise you. All of it is evidence of what becomes possible when people are given access to the tools of musical expression and the freedom to use them.

You don’t have to play an instrument to be changed by one. 

Questions to Ponder 

• Is there a performance you have witnessed, live or recorded, that you have never forgotten? 
• What does it feel like to watch someone play music with their whole self? 
• What is the instrument trying to say, and what is the musician adding that the instrument alone cannot?