"I play with a sense of danger.
I learn the rules, then break them."
Photo credit: Michael Inns; courtesy: IPR/Sylvie Biggar
The
music she plays....
"I wanted to play my heart out and it was so difficult
to express myself when there was someone else dictating the tempo and loudness
or softness," Glennie says.
And further, "I play with a sense of danger. I learn the rules, then break
them."
It comes as no surprise that innovation in solo percussive music has been
spurred by a performer rather than a composer. It is the percussion player
who is most keenly aware of the dearth in material written for her instruments;
it is her exceptional gift for musical perception and expression that makes
filling the void imperative. "I have a tremendous passion for the progress
of percussion through musical means, that is, gaining exciting repertoire."
Evelyn Glennie thus not only performs little known works for percussion
(a Milhaud Marimba and Vibraphone concerto, for example) but also
tracks down unpublished ones (recital pieces from composers in New Zealand,
Sweden, others), adapts pieces for other instruments (Chopin on marimba;
folk music adaptations) and most importantly commissions new compositions
for percussion solo and ensemble. To date, she has commissioned over ninety
works from some of the world's top contemporary composers (Richard Rodney
Bennett, Michael Daugherty, Dave Heath, James MacMillan, John McLeod, Dominic
Muldowney, Thea Musgrave, Askell Masson, Akira Miyoshi, and Christopher
Rouse).
She has also instituted her own
Percussion Composition Award, open to composers from the United Kingdom.
Her voracious talent has inevitably led her to seek out and absorb the music
of non-Western traditions and the more popular genres. Hence the collaborations
with musicians ranging from the Icelandic pop star Bjork, the British jazz
musician Django Bates, the Brazilian percussionist Nana Vasconcelos, and
to the Japanese drummers, Kodo. Crossing the boundaries of era, tradition
and form, she has made them vanish and created a rich continuum of new rhythmic
sound experience.
