So Much Myself

March 6, 2025

Pianist Sonya Lifschitz.

On Sunday, March 2, the audience at the Malachi Gilmore Hall were treated to an amazing and totally different musical performance. Performed by pianist Sonya Lifschitz with music composed by Robert Davidson, the show "Creative Women/So Much Myself: Piano Portraits" featured stories, comments and words by women, with the music matching the rhythms and patterns of the words spoken on the screen. The women represented provided a wide variety, from musicians Patti Smith, Dame Nellie Melba and Nina Simone through to Julia Gillard. Watching Nina Simone's fingers on a keyboard while Sonya played exactly the same notes was exceptional, as was music interpreting and accompanying Gillard's "I will not be lectured about sexism and misogyny by that man. Not now. Not ever" speech to parliament.

Sonya at the piano.

One part of the show with obvious topicality used the words of two sisters Asya and Manya who had been children when Kyiv in Ukraine was bombarded and the population evacuated, but that wasn't last week - it was over 80 years ago with different aggressors. There could have been people in the audience who considered this too political, but as is said about other events of that period in history - "Never forget". The synchronisation of spoken words and music made the message even more powerful.

This could be 2025. A still from the accompanying video.

Anyone who has ever performed music in a group knows how important it is to listen to and be aware of the other players. Across the world every day there are hundreds of musicians recording their parts while listening to other musicians through headphones. In fact it is almost the norm in recording popular music for each musician to record his or her contribution separately. But that's music, where you can have the sheet music in front of you or just know which notes follow each other. The "musicality" of speech is not like that at all so matching the music to the words takes much more concentration. For this performance, Robert Davidson recorded a click track to help Sonya keep the piano synchronised to the spoken words, and while most times a click track is just a form of metronome beating time, in this case it was something much more complicated. Robert and Sonya have to be congratulated on producing something awesome where what came out of the earpieces ensured that every note or chord played on the piano exactly matched the spoken words. Also, for our performance, Kris Schubert of the Boatshed studio in O'Connell not only skillfully mixed the live piano with the nuances of the recorded speech track for us in the audience, but also mixed the click track for Sonya's ears in a way that allowed her to play with such freedom. The level of concentration to make this work shows just how good both composer and performer are. A true masterpiece.

Concentration.

This show was first performed on March 8, 2023 - International Women's Day - and the concept as described by Sonya was "We wanted to showcase the incredible women who have challenged stereotypes and the status quo, had stood up to the prejudices of convention, and had envisaged and fought for a more just and humane world." Anyone seeing and listening to the show couldn't fail to agree that the goals had been met.

A truly exceptional musical event and there was talk after the show of Sonya performing more often in Oberon. Those future shows should not be missed.

As well as being a showcase of musical talent, the event was a fundraiser for Oberon Pharmacy's Mums & Bubs Group, with the entry fee being whatever audience members felt like donating.

Support Mums & Bubs.

The show was supported by a grant from Live Music Australia to help with "Equipment, professional development, artist fees, marketing and production costs to support original Australian live music at Malachi Gilmore Hall, Oberon".

Following a suggestion by Lucy East of the Malachi, a small change was made to this article on March 9, 2025.

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