In using the theme and title To be human for this performance, I sought to convey three main thoughts. The first is the unconditional preciousness and inalienable dignity of each human being as discussed by Raimond Gaita (A common humanity: Thinking about love and truth and justice pp. 5, 18 & 33). The second is that reflecting together on the shared experiences of life – birth, death, love, loss, health, sickness, joy, sadness, community and loneliness, and so on – has the potential to build bridges of compassion and empathy across sometimes polarizing cultural and ideological differences. (Steffen, V. (1997). Life stories and shared experience. Social Science & Medicine, 45(1)). Thirdly that stories and narratives from our own and others’ lives are meaningful and significant in and of themselves; Vibeke Steffen states (1997 p. 99) “personal stories also have their own life. They are a way of expressing experience, and as reality manifests itself as experience in us, stories are fundamental to human understanding.” In this performance, the selected works, together with the contextual information shared, created a musical narrative of various aspects of what it means to be human.
To be human was held on 14 November 2021, again at the Ian Hanger Recital Hall. Works featured included Stuart Greenbaum’s 800 million heartbeats; Dulcie Holland’s Cradle song for a special child; Maranoa lullaby from Piano trio no. 2 “A book of lullabies” by Ian Munro; Sleepless dreaming, a work written on commission for this project by Torres Strait Islander composer Will Kepa; Elena Kats-Chernin’s Blue silence and Carl Vine’s Piano trio: “the Village“.
In contrast to the Landscapes performance, where we sought to minimize human speech in the contextualising elements of the performance, here I featured selections of my (or others’, with permission) interviews with the composers as context; and for Maranoa Lullaby, we shared a youtube video of Gunggari woman, Ethel Munn, singing the Lethbridge transcription of that traditional lullaby.
Note: live recordings of the individual works are included on their pages, under featured works; but due to copyright restrictions I am unable to share a recording of the whole event.
