In collaboration with the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, the Penn Museum hosted a conversation between flutist and composer Emi Ferguson, harpist Ashley Jackson, and John Hopkins Assyriology professor Paul Delnero on March 4.
The event, part of the PCMS Education Program, served as a prelude to Ferguson and Jackson’s Philadelphia Chamber Music Society concert the following day and boasted about 60 attendees. Ferguson and Jackson, who started performing together as students at Juilliard, discussed their approach to music and how the program of their upcoming concert had been inspired by the Mesopotamian collections of the Near East Section of the Penn Museum, specifically the artifacts from the Royal Cemetery of Ur.
Ferguson described the theme of the program, which includes works from contemporary living composers as well as interpretations of ancient music, as “the flute and harp traveling throughout the world.”
Sol Katz — who sponsored the event along with his wife Pauline Candaux, Fritz, and Beverly Maytag — added that the collection is “one of the ten best-known archaeological outcomes and displays in the world.” The collection encompasses artifacts excavated from a burial ground with more than 2000 internments, including the jewelry of Queen Puabi and various instruments used in ritual burial practices.
Ferguson had first envisioned the theme of the program as Delnero, who was involved in the excavations, gave her a private tour of the collection.
The program focuses on the transcendental quality of music. A main point of the discussion was the question of whether instruments are capable of bringing the living and dead together. Both Ferguson and Jackson describe music as a medium of communication between different people, cultures, and even generations.
The fact that harps and flutes were found along with ritual knives and headdresses illustrated this time-spanning quality for them. At the end of the conversation, Ferguson performed Shokri’s “Bamboo flute improvisation,” which she had arranged for the Renaissance flute as a demonstration of the concert.
Ferguson, an English-American performer and composer, has performed at concerts and festivals around the world, both as a soloist and with groups, including the New York New Music Ensemble, the Handel and Haydn Society, and the Manhattan Chamber Players.
Jackson is a sought-after musician and collaborator and has performed at the Lincoln Center and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. Both see their performances as a responsibility to their audiences. While Ferguson described her work at memorial services and their deep impact on her, Jackson connected her musicality directly to her spirituality, stating that, for her, “harp has always been about serving something greater.”
Naomi Brill, a conservation technician at the Penn Museum, stated that she “enjoyed hearing about the connections that the musicians felt with the past.” She connected this sentiment to her hobby of making “archaeology-inspired” pottery, such as mugs with Minoan octopus motifs.
Stuart Fleming, a former employee of the museum, also added that he found the conversation “fascinating because this blend between history and music is so important.”
At the end of the conversation, Ferguson performed Shokri’s “Bamboo flute improvisation,” which she had arranged for the Renaissance flute as a demonstration of the concert.
“To have this right here is so important for all of us to learn,” Ferguson said. “I really wish and hope that conservatories and music educators around the country can start to adopt these stories and these narratives about all of these different musical makers from around the world or throughout time because we are all richer for it.”
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