NEWS

Barbara B. Heyman left this world on May 9, 2025, leaving behind for eternity her lifetime of scholarship and advocacy for the American composer Samuel Barber. Anyone watching the documentary Samuel Barber: Absolute Beauty quickly finds her the star of that show, too. At 130 minutes, it follows the spirit of Barbara's exhaustive enthusiasm, and so a few things just never made it into the long final cut. At the composer's centenary celebration hosted by Performing Arts at the Library of Congress in 2010, naively I thought we might be able to cover everything in one sitting to kick off the film project. But in that hallowed Whittall Pavilion surrounded by priceless rare instruments, I found that Barbara had a lot to say — and there's no shortcut to explaining genius. So we pretty soon just packed up, and made our plans to give it a full day in her New York City apartment later that year. The rest became magic; but here in this clip, you see our early try at buckling down, only to find Barbara's sense of humor, storytelling gift, and now-haunting perspective on life and death, the real order of business. Nobody in the world has seen this material until today, May 12, 2025, 15 years later, when I am reflecting on her life well lived, how much I'll miss her, and how there will never again be anyone like her.

H. Paul Moon
Spring Creek, Nevada

2020 conversation: open.spotify.com/episode/75TyCeZSzMk4ZwgGI7ADJC or podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/barbara-heyman/id1473390770?i=1000468112876 ... See MoreSee Less