The Morris Museum of Art is hosting the first screening of a new documentary film, A Gesture and a Word, on Tuesday, September 15, 2015, at 6:00 p.m. in the museum’s auditorium.
 
Directed and co-produced by award-winning independent filmmaker Dave Davidson, A Gesture and a Word is a portrait of musician and poet Rob Morsberger, who, at age 50, was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer. It came at a high point in his career. After 25 years of struggle in the music business, critics were starting to compare his songwriting to Randy Newman and Tom Waits, and it was finally all starting to come together for him. Rather than succumb to his condition, Morsberger embarked on the most prolific period of his career. Determined to fully utilize his physical and mental resources, he explored through words and music the nature of life, the inevitability of death, and the infinite magic to be found in the detail of a single moment.
 
 To a person, his colleagues agree that Rob was “the greatest songwriter you never heard of,” a fact that the film makes plain. But the film is also about something more: it is concerned with the dignity and irrepressible creative spirit of a man who lived life to the fullest. It is an inspiration to viewers who learn that art can be at the core of a life well-lived, no matter how short.
 
 “From our first meeting back in 2007, I knew Rob Morsberger and I would be working together,” said Dave Davidson, director of A Gesture and a Word. “That night, we were both sitting on a panel about music and film. I was there because my documentaries featured musicians andmusical themes, and Rob was there as a composer for television, having scored for PBS’s Nova and Nova Science Now. I loved his work. In 2012, I received a grant for a project to bring contemporary composers together with the legendary avant-garde films produced in the 1920s by the Dadaist Hans Richter.
 
While working on this project, Rob received his diagnosis. We made the decision that I would just keep filming and he would just keep making music. At that time, I had no idea the amount of creativity, focus, and sheer joy that Rob would pack into his final twenty months . . . but that is what’s in the film. It’s an astonishing testament to the triumph of the creative spirit even in the most devastating circumstances.”