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LUCY
November 30, 1974, was a blistering hot day, when on an expedition to a remote desert site in Ethiopia, named Hadar, I found portions of a skeleton now known worldwide by the affectionate name of Lucy.
I had just completed graduate school at the University of Chicago and was directing my first major expedition to the Great Rift Valley of Africa. I was in search of human ancestor remains in geological deposits roughly 3.5 million years old. After first recognizing her elbow eroding out of an ancient sandstone horizon, I spotted other parts of the skeleton — a leg bone, part of a pelvis, a fragment of a jaw — and I quickly realized that I had found part of a very ancient skeleton.
Now dated very precisely to 3.2 million years, Lucy — named after the Beatles' song Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds — has become a celebrity among fossils. She shows up in crossword puzzles, in cartoons, in lyrics to rock music, as a character in a feminist play and even as a tattoo.
Lucy has become an ancestral ambassador of sorts, introducing people everywhere to the study of human origins. Even to those who know practically nothing about human evolution, Lucy is vaguely familiar In fact, bringing up her name is like referring to a distant relative, which, of course, she is.
She has become an important touchstone, a reference point, to which other discoveries are compared. Fossil hominids are discussed as being “older than” or “more complete” than Lucy, for example. And most importantly, like the derivation of her name from the Latin lux, she has thrown much light on one of the earliest stages of human evolution. In 1978 she was given the scientific name Australopithecus afarensis, named after the Afar region of Ethiopia where she was found.
While the three-and-a-half-foot-tall skeleton named Lucy has generated great controversy among anthropologists, there is no doubt that she is a vital link in human evolution. But most importantly she reminds us all of our link to the natural world.
— Dr. Donald C. Johanson,
Discoverer of Lucy
“Lucy” is the affectionate name given to the 3.2 million year old skeleton found in 1974 by Donald Johanson. In 1979 I saw an artist's drawing of what he thought Lucy looked like. Somehow, some way, the look in her eyes reached out to me and I knew I would convey in sound the impact her existence had on me.
Composing Lucy didn't occur until 10 years after I saw the picture but in that time I learned everything I could about her species, Australopithecus afarensis, how they lived, how they died, and what it took to survive this world 3.2 million years ago. Started in 1988, the ballet score was completed three years later.
Working night and day during the summer of 1991 to finish the orchestration, I was anxious to show it to Alun Jones, Artistic Director of the Louisville Ballet, in hopes that he would choreograph and produce it. However, all I had besides the score was a tape I made of Lucy using piano four-hands and one percussionist. Needless to say, Mr. Jones wasn't very impressed and so Lucy sat on the shelf for five years patiently waiting to be heard.
In July 1995 I took a trip to Glasgow, Scotland to attend the International String Workshop and upon arriving home, I decided that the only way to get Lucy heard was to hire an orchestra and make a demo tape. I borrowed $30,000, hired the Louisville Festival Symphony, and in July 1996, Lucy came to life in sound. I invited Alun Jones and his wife, Helen Starr, to attend the concert the Louisville Festival Symphony was presenting of my works. Lucy was the main feature and she stole the show. After the concert, Alun Jones said, “We need to talk.” My dream was coming true.
It took three years for Lucy to make it to the stage but on January 21, 1999, she was premièred by the Louisville Ballet at Whitney Hall, Kentucky Center for the Arts. Since then, a film documentary of her has been made by Kentucky Educational Television, she has won a regional Emmy, a Gabriel award, and a NETA award. She will again be performed in February 2002 by the Louisville Ballet.
In 1974, the discovery of Lucy shed light on our ancestors and how we came to be made the way we are. In 1999, the première of Lucy, the ballet, shed further light on our humanness and how we are connected to all which has come before. Lucy is one of my early ancestors and I'm proud to be one of her descendents.
— Shirl Jae Atwell
Shirl Jae Atwell
Shirl Jae Atwell earned a bachelor of music education degree from Kansas State Teachers College and master of music theory/composition degree at the University of Louisville and completed four years of post-graduate work in composition at the University of South Carolina.
In 1984 she won the Clifford Shaw Memorial Award for Kentucky Composers; was commissioned to write Fear Not, Little Flock for the 175th anniversary of the Little Flock Baptist Church; and saw the New York City debut of her first opera, Sagegrass. In 1991, another of her operas, Esta Hargis, was premièred at Emporia State University in Kansas, followed shortly by the 1992 debut of Handelian, a work for string orchestra premièred by the Jefferson County All-County Middle School Orchestra. Louisville's Southern Baptist Seminary Orchestra premièred her Movements Four South, an orchestral suite, in 1993. That year also saw the placement of six Shirl Jae Atwell scores in the permanent collection of the Paris Bibliotèque Inernationale de Musique Contemporaine at the invitation of the Contemporary Music International Information Service.
Ms. Atwell was named the 1996 winner of the National School Orchestra Association composition contest with her string orchestra piece Modus á Four. She is also the 1997 winner of the Texas Orchestra Directors Association contest with a string orchestra piece entitled Drifen.
Most recently, Lucy, with music by Ms. Atwell and choreography by Alun Jones, was premièred by the Louisville Ballet in January 1999. Lucy, which was inspired by the discovery of a 3.2 million-year old skeleton, was the subject of a Kentucky Education Television documentary that was aired on November 10, 1999.
In June 2000, the televised production of Lucy was awarded the Arts & Culture Emmy by the Ohio Valley Chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences. In July, a Certificate of Merit was awarded to Lucy by Unda-USA, the National Catholic Association for Communicators. And in January 2001, Lucy was awarded second place by the National Education Television Association for program performance.
An active composer with many commissions and publications to her credit, Ms. Atwell still finds time to serve as a full-time string orchestra educator with the Jefferson County Public Schools, Louisville, Kentucky. She maintains active membership in ASCAP, Music Educators National Conference, ASTA with NSOA, Texas Orchestra Directors Association, and Kentucky Music Educators Association and is currently serving as President of the Kentucky Cello Club.
Texts
I. Prologue: In principio creavit Deus celum et terram.
And the earth was without form, and void;
and darkness was upon the
ace of the deep.
And the Spirit of God moved
pon the face of the waters.
And God said, Let there be light:
nd there was light.
Genesis 1:1-3
Latin Vulgate Bible
King James Version
II. Morning: We rise to greet the sun and in return, we are granted another day.
III. Hunted: A large animal stalks Lucy's group and kills one of them.
IV. Songlines:
Dreamtime: “Aboriginal Creation myths tell of the legendary totemic beings who had wandered over the continent in the Dreamtime, singing out the name of everything that crossed their path— birds, animals, plants, rocks, waterholes — and so singing the world into existence…Each totemic ancestor, while travelling through the country, was thought to have scattered a trail of words and musical notes along the line of his footprints…these Dreaming-tracks lay over the land as `ways' of communication between the most far-flung tribes.”
Bruce Chatwin
The Songlines
V. Ceremony: How do we explain the inexplicable?
VI. Musings: Who are we? Where have we been? Where are we going?
VII. Warning: Volcanic rumblings, tremors, and eruptions
VIII. Leavetaking: Reluctantly, Lucy and her group must leave the volcanic area and in so doing, leaves behind her footprints and her legacy.
Greensboro Symphony Orchestra
Violin I
John Fadial, Concertmaster
Fabrice Dharamraj,
Assoc. Concertmaster
Wendy Rawls,
sst. Concertmaster
Andrew Emmett
Carla Rincon
Alison James
Daniel Skidmore
Catherine Johnson
Ruth Metheny
Deirdre Foley
Betty Kelley
Amy Oswald
Violin II
Steve Harper, Principal
Alison Lawson,
sst. Principal
Jose Gregorio Midero
Jean Sykes
Ramilya Siegel
Karen Collins
Kay Hensley
Travis Newton
Diana Mollaioli
David Mullikin
Angela Hsu
Amanda Matthews
Viola
Scott Wyatt Rawls, Principal
Maureen Michels, Asst. Principal
Logan Strawn
Arkady Agrest
Matthew King
Camille Prescott
Caroline Jones
Emile Simonel
Anne DiPiazza
Nelson Hernandez
Cello
Beth Vanderborgh, Principal
Evan Richey, Asst. Principal
Worth Williams
Marcia Riley
Melodee Karabin
Laura Shirley
John W. Turner
Charles Medlin
Bass
John Spuller, Principal
Joseph Farley, Asst. Principal
William Postlethwait
Mara Barker
Flute
Lisa Ransom, Principal
Linda Cykert
Carla Copeland-Burns
Oboe
Cara Fish, Principal
Anna Lampidis
Clarinet
Kelly Burke, Principal
Leslie Miller
Edwin Riley
Bassoon
Carol Bernstorf, Principal
David Bryant
Horn
Robert Campbell, Principal
Cameron Peck
Trumpet
Anita Cirba, Principal
Kenneth Wilmot
Trombone
John Melton, Principal
David Wulfeck
Erik Salzwedel
Tuba
David Nicholson, Principal
Timpani
William Congdon
Percussion
Wiley A. Sykes, Principal
Beverly Naiditch, Asst. Principal
John Beck
Stephen Burke
Collin Tribby
Anthony Deyo
Piano
Nancy Johnston
Cover Photo: Vita Limanovica: scene from the Louisville Ballet's production of Lucy. © 2002. All rights reserved.
Cover design: Bates Miyamoto Design
Engineer:N.J. Bergman
Recorded at: Dana Auditorium - Guilford College, Greensboro, NC
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