On Memory -An evening with Alexander McCall Smith and Harry Whalley

The celebrated author Alexander McCall Smith asks, ‘how do memories make us who we are?’ The answer comes in music – by Harry Whalley – and poetry and scientific exploration informed by neurologist Professor Adam Zeman. Joined by the acclaimed Gildas String Quartet and soprano Sarah Dacey each movement explores a different capacity of memory. How memories are formed before birth from a mother’s song, how autobiographical memories are encoded in our minds and memories declines in old age.

After an interval, this is followed with a discussion with the authors (Alexander McCall Smith and Adam Zeman) led and chaired by Professor Catherine Loveday, digging deeper into the special relationship that music has with memory and our sense of self.