The director Peter Sellars, 67, has devoted a lifetime to music theater on the cutting edge, be it as an early champion of Handel for our time, be it in coaxing operas out of John Adams, beginning with Nixon in China. Matthew Aucoin, 35, is a composer driven by a similarly questing spirit—witness his role as cofounder, with director-choreographer Zack Winokur, of AMOC* (American Modern Opera Company), a multidisciplinary cohort of creatives “united by a commitment to collective authorship and long-term, generative relationships with other artists.” In Music for New Bodies, Aucoin and Sellars, MacArthur fellows both, have come up with what they call “an uncategorizable piece” based on the prize-winning through-a-glass-darkly poetry of Jorie Graham, 74, MacArthur fellow number three in this mix. Expect “a portrait of our moment in history as seen through the eyes of a cancer patient undergoing a drastic medical procedure.” In the words of a critic and fellow poet, Graham is “never less than in dialogue with everything. She is the world champion at shot-putting the great questions.” What, for instance, does it mean, in a time when life is ever more virtual, to have a body? Now that humans have poisoned the planet, can we still listen to what the earth has to tell us? Yes, it all sounds kinda heavy, but hey, you were expecting maybe The Barber of Seville? Luckily, Sellars has a gift for touching apocalypse with epiphany. So often with his projects, it’s the saving grace.