Hickey: Sapiens - A Brief History of Humankind / Rumyantsev

Regular price $8.99
Label
Sono Luminus
Release Date
March 14, 2025
Format
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    Featuring
    • COMPOSER
      Sean Hickey
    • PERFORMER
      Vladimir Rumyantsev
    Product Details
    • RELEASE DATE
      March 14, 2025
    • UPC
      053479228505
    • CATALOG NUMBER
      DSL-92285
    • LABEL
      Sono Luminus
    • NUMBER OF DISCS
      1
    • GENRE
    Works
    1. I. Pre-History

      Composer: Sean Hickey

      Performer: Vladimir Rumyantsev

    2. II. Lascaux

      Composer: Sean Hickey

      Performer: Vladimir Rumyantsev

    3. III. Fertile Crescent

      Composer: Sean Hickey

      Performer: Vladimir Rumyantsev

    4. IV. Jericho

      Composer: Sean Hickey

      Performer: Vladimir Rumyantsev

    5. V. Mean Temperament

      Composer: Sean Hickey

      Performer: Vladimir Rumyantsev

    6. VI. Double Helix

      Composer: Sean Hickey

      Performer: Vladimir Rumyantsev

    7. VII. Confirmation Bias

      Composer: Sean Hickey

      Performer: Vladimir Rumyantsev

    8. VIII. Commonwealth

      Composer: Sean Hickey

      Performer: Vladimir Rumyantsev


Yuval Noah Harari’s Sapiens, first published in 2011 in Hebrew, and in 2014 in English, is justifiably one of the most celebrated books of our time. With its audacious subtitle, the book attempts to explain and explore why our particular species has thrived while most others have perished, and how we are set apart from all others due to our ability and desire to understand and give meaning to things that do not necessarily exist – such as the shared myths of language, money, religion, love, political boundaries, and a host of things not truly tangible but with which we have developed a shared understanding. What I have attempted is a humble musical response to human signposts, concepts, myths, or ideas that we as a species have carried with us, developing along the way these past couple hundred thousand or so years – breadcrumbs on the path of humanity. I imagined the modern piano as a sort of meta-instrument, present at the dawns of humankind, the cognitive and agricultural revolutions, and some of the most notable inflection points of our troubled and triumphant history. The piece begins not on the piano, but at the piano, with a single human breath, as I imagine the first music to have been, somewhere near the dawn of our species. If it is, like most, intended to die off one day, I imagine the very last music to sound more or less the same.