Deaf percussionist Evelyn Glennie has something to teach all of us about the importance of interpreting, rather than simply translating, the music on the page. The trick, she says, is to listen “to ourselves.” Listening with the whole body offers us a way of understanding a piece that is both more personal and more musical. It also leads to greater connection with our instrument and greater technical control.
For Glennie, who has been profoundly deaf since childhood, listening has always been a full-body experience. At the age of 12, when she began playing the timpani, she learned to tune the drums in different intervals by feeling the differences in vibrations in her finger bones, and then finally in her whole body. She and her teacher listened to the differences between the orchestral instruments by placing their hands on the walls of the rehearsal room while the instruments sounded. Glennie says this ability to listen with one’s whole body is key to truly listening to and understanding all the music we play, and is possible and necessary for every musician. Her goal, she says, is “to teach the world how to listen.”
Glennie teaches us an art of interpretation that draws from our own personal and bodily experience. “All of my performances are based on entirely what I experience, and not by learning a piece of music, putting on someone else’s interpretation of it, buying all the CD’s possible of that particular piece of music, and so on and so forth, because that isn’t giving me enough of something that is so raw and so basic, and something that I can fully experience the journey of.”
In this immensely inspiring video, Glennie demonstrates her way of listening, plays the snare drum and marimba, and lectures on the art of interpretation. This is a must-see for every musician.
You can also see Glennie in the documentary Touch the Sound, with composer/guitarist Fred Frith.
How do you listen? How do you connect with your instrument? Leave a comment here on the Harmonious.ly blog and tell us about it.
