A piano, a virtuoso, and a five-part musical portrait gallery where archival video, narrative and music collide in an interconnecting tapestry of stories celebrating discovery.
Pianist Sonya Lifschitz and composer Robert Davidson create a series of musical portraits spanning centuries of female artists, scientists and leaders. This compelling new work from the creators of Stalin’s Piano waves a complex, interconnected tapestry of stories through the recorded words of some of our greatest voices and creators, including figures as diverse as Marie Curie, Frida Kahlo, Dame Nellie Melba, Patti Smith, Malouma, Julia Gillard and Nina Simone. Sonya blends her own voice with these recordings, bringing to life stories from a thousand years ago, through to her own Ukrainian grandmother and great aunt recounting their escape from Kyiv during the Nazi bombings and massacres. Remnants of these extraordinary lives are placed, as precious objects, into frames – musical frames provided by Sonya’s piano and derived by Davidson from each person’s spoken intonation, fostering hearing the inherent melody and rhythm in the voices. So much Myself, Piano Portraits is a stunning original collection which probes the big questions of our time and celebrates stories of people bringing their fullest selves to the challenges of convention, danger, inertia and prejudice.
Approx. 1 hr 20 mins (No Interval)
