How would you perform……

I am just standing in a queue at Heathrow airport waiting for my flight to Lausanne, Switzerland where I will be performing at the Salle Métropole. On this occasion I will be performing the world premiere of Cosmos by Jean-Luc Darbellay.

As I wait my turn I think about the journey I have taken so many times to reach this point of performing a world premiere. As part of the journey my performance will be critiqued and it set me  thinking about how you would feel if you went to work one day to be told your performance that day would be reviewed by a journalist and it would appear in The Times!

As musicians we are critiqued for most performances we give and the comments are printed for all to read and often nowadays there will be an additional poor quality video posted on YouTube taken on a mobile phone just for good measure!

How would you review your own performance?

How would you prepare?

My preparation often involves the most mundane processes such as pacing a distance between an imaginary instrument set up. A composer may decide to use a lot of instruments and I am not always able to position them in my studio the way they will be on stage so I ‘pace’ the imaginary distances in my lounge! My neighbours probably think I am quite potty!

If you were subject to such reviews how would you structure your day? Would you do things differently? How would you feel if your day was scrutinised and laid out for others to judge and how would you feel about being judged by others in this way?

I am not a judgemental type of person and of course I don’t have to read the reviews. But somehow it is a useful benchmark to have and be aware of and on some occasions really nice and interesting things are said about me which are always welcome. I try to analyse objectively the less kind reviews and of course just like you I need to balance the comments against many other factors that the critic would not be aware of.

We all go to work with some degree of ‘baggage’ and I am no different. I try very hard to approach each event with minimal baggage impact but I am sure that sometimes a little seeps out! When I meet a new orchestra it is critical that we begin to work together as a team from the first meeting – we cannot take time to ‘gel’ or slowly build up to a good working relationship purely because we will be performing in concert within hours of our first meeting. We may not even have time to know everyone by name or casually chat over the coffee machine. From the minute we start rehearsals we need to bring the music together.

Let me know about your day and how you would deal with published reviews – I really am interested.

Have a great day – I know I will!

Share me with your friends on Facebook – Dame Evelyn Glennie

Follow me on Twitter - @Dame Evelyn

Thank you for discovering me - www.evelyn.co.uk

Living in a nursery rhyme

Living in a nursery rhyme

In a nonsensical way how often do you have a day or two when you feel as if you are in another dimension. Somehow you have wandered inadvertently into a cartoon or rhyme where nothing makes sense at the time or that you are seeing events around you but you are not participating in the traditional sense.

During a recent photo shoot for German fashion magazine Brigitte I found my thoughts wandering in the strangest directions.

The shoot was done at my new business unit in Huntingdon Cambridgeshire using some of the instruments from my own private collection. The photographer, Philipp Rathmer , is a great professional and has photographed many celebrities including Lady GaGa, Steffen Hennsler and Wilma Elles and many others. And here he is photographing me warts and all!

To the reader of a magazine and to the observer of the photo shoot watching a person standing in front of a white screen, with a variety of interesting objet d’art dotted about, probably seems very glamorous. The reality is that this kind of thing can be very exhausting for everyone concerned not least of all the model as I quickly found out.

Those of you who follow me on Facebook and who have seen me perform in concert will know that I often perform with a whole gamut of instruments which require a great deal of energy. My need to pay attention to detail is critical too but on a photo shoot it is almost the opposite – keeping still, only being required to make small movements and smiling without a stimulant, laughing without a joke is very hard to do for a prolonged period – hats off to fashion models the world over!

As I stood posing for shot after shot I found my mind wandering to the strangest places. The room we were in has instruments all around and I remembered when I had last been in the room and had thought I had placed the instruments in order - so why had I left that crotale there? Where was the Loch Ness practice pad? and which box did I put the jewellery samples in? as I stood motionless these thoughts would pop in and out of my mind like bubbles! Had I put the tax disc in the car, left the gas on! Fed the cat and so on my thoughts trundled like an old cart on cobblestones!

Out of the corner of my eye I could see, and immediately wanted to wipe, the dust from a window sill close by me and I mentally logged a note to myself to get a duster when the shoot was over! Crazy stuff that fills and inhabits the brain when required to stand still!

In order to capture movement wind machines are used to blow air over the model to give the effect of movement but the difference between being out in a strong wind and having air blowing at the face is quite surreal – outside in a strong wind one can shake the head, turn or shelter unlike the intensity of a photographic studio where the idea is to remain statuesque as others control the movements. It is near impossible and now my nose itches!

Don’t misunderstand me, I thoroughly enjoyed the experience and the team were absolutely fantastic. I would like to say a huge thank you to Bäerbel Recktenwald, fashion editor for Brigitte. She really knows her stuff and is great to work with. Seeing how she works adds to the ‘nursery rhyme’ concept of creating a completely different world that floats within and around reality. Her team were like the cogs in a mechanical clock, working to and fro always synchronised, always in the right spot at the right time. And as the creator of Alice in wonderland would or should have said ‘We were done and dusted in time for tea’.

I recognise the process of being a model for the day or two is succumbing to vanity big time but I loved every minute of it and hope you enjoy the results!

Cosmos.....

My favourite book is a dictionary; I always have one to hand. I dip in and out of it like a box of chocolates eager to read the description of a new word or even an old favourite. As you know the new piece I am currently working on is titled Cosmos and as I interpret the composer's notes I wondered what my dictionary had to say about the title.


The 'New Collins Concise English Dictionary' description is "1. the universe considered as an ordered system" 2. any ordered system". It occurs to me that my interpretation is to create an ordered system from an ordered system. I am creating a flow, a journey - something to savour and enjoy.


I want to take the audience on a voyage into another space. Into an area where they may not have thought of going. A place where their normal everyday lives would not reach without the intervention of another being.


As I move amongst my instruments I am always looking for that other place, that new sound that I have not discovered before. I hope my natural curiosity is shared by the audience when the time comes. In the meantime I would be very interested to hear from those of you who are excited by the idea of interpreting the Cosmos and whatever form that may take.

And another first for me...

I am dipping my toe into this enormous cavern of words, which most of you know well. However for me it is something very new, exciting and just a little bit scary.

I want to be good at blogging in the same way that I strive to be good at music and sound creation. My normal tools are a wonderful array of percussion instruments. I am comfortable around them and they are my family.

Following a few successful column articles I have written previously for the female drummer magazine TomTom in the USA I thought I might try writing my own blog and I hope it creates an appeal.

This afternoon I am finding my way round a new composition written for me by the composer Jean-Luc Darbellay. The piece is called Cosmos and the instruments Jean-Luc has chosen to use are bulging at the seams in my studio in Cambridgeshire. I will be giving the world premiere of this piece on the 31^st October 2011 at Salle Metropole, Lausanne, Switzerland.

Working with composers is a large part of my career and I enter each project with excitement and trepidation. Sometimes a composer will provide tantalising single pages faxed one at a time and then others send a whole score beautifully written. Over the years and now in excess of 170 commissions I have collected them all and hope that one day I will be in a position whereby I can make them available to the public including notes, emails and comment exchanges with the composer. Each one is a work of art and I treasure them all.

Find Evelyn on Facebook - Dame Evelyn Glennie

Follow Evelyn on Twitter - @DameEvelyn