Academy Village resident Anne Kilmer will speak on "Ancient Music" at a special Arizona Senior Academy presentation Wednesday.
Scheduled for 3:30 p.m., the program will also include harpist Lorna Govier playing a replica of an ancient lyre.
The presentation is free and open to the public.
Among the many tragedies of the 2003 plundering of the Iraq Museum in Baghdad was the destruction of the Golden Lyre, a 4,500-year-old musical instrument originally excavated in the 1920s by British archaeologist Sir Leonard Woolley from the ancient royal graves of Ur in what is now southern Iraq.
While an irretrievable loss to history, this vandalism and desecration provided a challenge to Kilmer, a retired professor of Assyriology from the University of California-Berkeley.
Kilmer owns a replica of the Silver Lyre, also from Ur, the original of which is in the British Museum in London. She was contacted in 2009 by a group in England whose members were building an exact, playable replica of the Golden Lyre. To play their replica lyre, they needed music, so they turned to Kilmer, an international authority on ancient Sumerian and Mesopotamian music.
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Through her British colleagues, Kilmer was introduced to Govier, a Tucson harpist. The two restrung her replica lyre and tuned it to the known Mesopotamian scales. Kilmer provided Govier with music for an ancient cult hymn and also made verse renderings of three more ancient texts with English translations for which Govier composed the music.
Wednesday's presentation will include live performances of some of the songs Kilmer and Govier recorded on a new CD, "The Silver Lyre, New Music for a Mesopotamian Lyre."
They have also prepared an explanatory booklet to accompany the new CD, which was recorded in Tucson at Jim Brady Recording Studios.
Academy Village is an active-adult community located off Old Spanish Trail six miles southeast of Saguaro National Park East.
If you go
• What: "Ancient Music" lecture and recital by Anne Kilmer and Lorna Govier
• When: 3:30 p.m. Wednesday
• Where: Arizona Senior Academy Building at Academy Village, 13715 E. Langtry Lane
• Admission: Free; donations accepted
• Reservations: Recommended; email info@arizonasenioracademy.org or call 647-0980
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