While We Are Here: Life, Love, Loss, and the Gift of Graceful Passages

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An intimate evening of music, story, deep listening, and conversation with award-winning composer and performer Gary Malkin.

What if our relationship with death has been quietly shaping our relationship with life all along?

This autumn marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of Graceful Passages, the collection of music and spoken word that Emmy Award-winning composer Gary Malkin created with Michael and Doris Stillwater. It has accompanied more than a million people through serious illness, caregiving, dying, and grief. Gary has come to understand that its deepest purpose was never only to help us die well. It was to help us live more consciously.

Gathered around the piano in the living room of the Sanctuary, Gary will weave together personal stories, musical excerpts, and reflections from a lifetime of exploring what music can awaken in us when words alone are no longer enough. Since the recent passing of his friend and collaborator Michael Stillwater, this conversation has become deeply personal. It is an invitation to explore loss and the surprising gifts it can carry. Together we will ask: what becomes possible when we stop treating mortality as an interruption to life and begin recognizing it as one of our greatest teachers?

This is an evening for remembering how to love being alive, with courage, tenderness, gratitude, and presence. Gary will share how Graceful Passages can accompany someone who is dying, those caring for them, and those who grieve, and how music can open awe and connection when words fall short. You will leave with ways to bring this music into your own life and the lives you tend, and with a deepened practice of listening and reverence for this one precious life.

At Emberlight, every day we practice ways to embrace death and support one another with loving presence. This evening carries that practice into song and story, an invitation to listen deeply, bear witness together, and meet the mystery with awe and gratitude.

"Gary draws audiences into the heart of a gathering. He knows how to use music and the performing arts to deepen listening, communication, and connection."

-Lynne Twist, author of Living a Committed Life and co-founder of the Pachamama Alliance

About Gary Malkin

Gary Malkin is a composer, performer, speaker, and experiential educator whose lifelong inquiry explores how music, deep listening, and our willingness to embrace life's impermanence can awaken us more fully to the preciousness of being alive. After decades composing for film and television, a life-altering accident redirected his work toward healing, human development, and the emotional and spiritual dimensions of life's most profound transitions. He went on to co-create Graceful Passages: A Companion for Living and Dying. Today his work is evolving through Resonance Intelligence, an inquiry into the deeply human capacities of presence, emotional courage, connection, compassion, meaning, and awe.

Gary's relationship with this community has a poignant history. Just two weeks before Emberlight's launch in May 2024, he and Hope Fitzgerald offered the official Graceful Passages Grief Literacy program, followed by a concert with special guest David Wilcox. Now newly rooted in Asheville, this evening marks Gary's first time sharing his work as a member of the community he already feels deeply at home within. Learn more at PortalsofAwe.com/GaryMalkin.

Where to meet

The living room of the Sanctuary at Emberlight. Seating includes couches, chairs, and back jacks around the piano.

This is a Pay What You Can event, and proceeds are shared with Emberlight. The care we offer is free to every resident and family who comes to us, and it stays free because this community holds it up. We invite you to give what feels right for you, and for those able to give more, that generosity is what keeps a bed open and a hand held for the next person who needs one.

Please note that all event tickets are non-refundable, except in the case that Emberlight cancels the event.

Please contact events@emberlightway.org with any questions.