6ft Baby filled with Percussion!

Perception - I find this word full of intrigue and mystery and I am aware it often leads to misunderstanding and in the case of the '6ft baby filled with percussion' - hilarity!

Like many people in our modern virtual world I like to use email to keep in touch and stay updated on matters especially regarding work.

However because I am often out and about I use a Blackberry mobile phone to connect with my family and team, those of you with sore thumbs will appreciate why I often abbreviate my messages or in some cases I just end up typing the least amount of characters I can get away with. And this occasionally creates havoc!

My involvement this week with a brilliant Sky Arts programme which I am shortly about to appear on has left my team in hysterics as they read my abbreviated text this morning "A baby will be too small to get percussion inside of the piano so the minimum would be a 6 ft." 

I had been discussing the release of my new CD Sound Spirits which I recorded last year at Real World Studios with the Guitarist Jon Hemmersam. The CD is pure improvisation and my input involved getting my head and some of my percussion instruments inside a piano to create pure sounds in an unusual way!

Their perception skills ran amok as they read my email and tried to work out what my message meant. As you can imagine I am not applying some kind of cruelty to oversized babies I was referring to a Baby Grand Piano! I will have to bear their giggles for sometime to come. 

I thought I would share this with you in the hope that you would have other anecdotes to tell me and that my team will see I am not alone!!

Help! my mail daemon is depressed!

Having had a very frustrating week due to a variety of technical problems trying to finalise my new e-commerce store. I finally fell about laughing when I saw the comments in a Mailer Daemon email today. The text below was in amongst a string of hypertext and as I sipped my coffee and reached for another biscuit I just could not help but imagine a sad, bedraggled, downtrodden Ethernet robot struggling in a virtual queue trying to deliver an email that just would not go!

From: Mailer Daemon:

Hi. This is the mail message programme.

“I'm afraid I wasn't able to deliver your message to the following addresses. This is a permanent error; I've given up. Sorry it didn't work out. Greeting failed. Service refused, please try later.

I'm not going to try again; this message has been in the queue too long."

But please do try my store which is now finally open!!!

When Michael met Kai........

Last week  I met with Kai Steensgard and Michael Hansen. They are a dynamic duo who have created and built the Aluphone I used to perform the beautiful 'Caliban's Dream's' to accompany the lighting of the flame at the London 2012 Olympics opening ceremony.

The instrument was conceived when Kai and Michael met at a trade fair. They got together following a friendly competitive exchange as they vied for each others customers!

Michael's business involves the use of the aluminium cones to cap wooden posts and Kai is a Musician and they were on opposite stalls. Their friendly exchange led to curiosity about the sound the post caps would make if struck by a mallet - and an instrument idea was born!

They came to me with the prototype, which is the actual instrument I used in the ceremony.

Since then we have shared ideas and concepts about this beautiful instrument and thus created several versions of the 'Glennie Aluphone', testament to the great working relationship between percussionists and instrument manufacturers to develop and improve our instruments.

When a new instrument is made I make it a priority to ensure composers are made aware about the prospect of creating compositions including the addition of exciting new sounds and this one is no exception! 

My studio is often described as an Aladdin's Cave! and I have shared many hours with composers exploring a huge range of sounds created on some of the many instruments I have in my collection.

You would be amazed how many different sounds can be created from just one instrument and I have always had a curiosity for wanting to try every surface even if it means turning the whole thing upside down! I still cannot resist the temptation to explore all avenues and have ended up in fits of giggles when composers join me for an afternoon of sound creation. 

The attached image was taken at my offices with Kai and Michael, as you can see the Aluphone is a very impressive instrument and I am proud of the place it holds in my collection.

Fusional Fragments and the Pied Piper!

When I first discussed the idea of Percussion and Dance I was not completely sure how this would work out. Me in a tutu! maybe not!

However my subsequent meetings with Marc Brew filled me with excitement about this brand new project. Marc's dancers have been extremely responsive to having me on stage and in amongst them with my instruments. My interaction has been compared to the Pied Piper enticing the dancers into an unknown world.

When percussion meets another medium there are a great deal of practical obstacles to overcome and in this production the team have proved extremely inventive with the strategic placement of my instruments on stage.

As the dancers perform the atmosphere changes and engulfs them into a surreal broken environment. This is where I use my percussive persuasion to entice them to break free of their fragmented worlds.

The next performances are at Tramway in Glasgow on Friday 26th and Saturday 27th October.

I hope you will be able to book your tickets to one of these exciting performances and please do let me know what you think, I welcome your feedback.

Suitcase to suitcase

Just in case anyone is thinking that I lead a glamorous life let me describe it as it really is!

Last Friday I returned around lunchtime to my home in Cambridgeshire from performing with Maria Rud, Philip Sheppard and Canty at the National Museum of Scotland. We  collaborated on a brand new project titled AniMotion which combined art with music.

It was a lovely sunny day in Cambridgeshire but as I waited for my instruments to be returned (they are couriered to UK and some European events nowadays), I would really have liked to get out into the sunshine and my beloved garden - but sadly no time for hobbies! Instead I emptied one suitcase and began to fill another with the items I would need for my next engagement in Poland. In go the usual items clothing and toiletries and then using every available corner of my suitcase I pack any small instruments the Filharmonia Czestochowska Orchestra may not be able to provide.

I make sure my stick case remains open until the last minute as I spend all day Saturday practising in my studio to ensure I know the piece as well as possible.

Multitasking is also essential, so in between practising movements in the score I also organise the laundry, vacuum, clean and make sure there is enough food left out for my cat, Sophie, while I am away. 

When I am done I just have time to keep a promise to a friend who has invited me to attend an evening event organised at a local school. The children performed a series of dance routines and I am always amazed at the quality of these amateur events. It is clear to me there is immense dedication from school staff, family and volunteers to give these children the opportunity to have their moment and I am delighted to say the audience showed an enthusiastic appreciation.

Without this kind of support I am well aware many children would not have these chances to express themselves in the arts. I am deeply saddened by the short term view of successive governments as they opt to cut music from the curriculum.

I follow projects like the Astar initiative conceived by the Royal Scottish National Orchestra and their conductor Peter Oundjian. The project aims to give a copy of their Astar CD to every child born in Scotland. The music is recorded by the RSNO designed for playtime, nap time and sleep time. 

Whilst I am enormously proud this initiative has come from my homeland Scotland, I would really like to see every child given a copy of this CD. Music is about inclusion and in my opinion music is the greatest cohesion for societies across the world, you do not even need to know the language if you can share the love of music.

I can personally demonstrate this because I am writing my blog today from my dressing room in the home of the Huberman Festival Filharmonia Czestochowska, Poland, which I can hardly pronounce! Our conductor Adam Klocek will bring us together through the notes on the score and because we all share one common goal to perform the music to the best of our abilities, language barriers simply will not exist.

We will be performing the World Premiere of the Double Concerto for Percussion and Cello by Olga Hans in front of an audience and a TV crew so no pressure!!!

I hope all of you who read this will take a look at what is happening to your children's music education and feel moved to approach decisions makers to ensure your children are given equal opportunity to experience the wonderful world of music in some way, shape or form.

In the meantime I will return home on Wednesday lunchtime to begin unpacking and repacking again for a speaking engagement in Dublin on Friday!

AniMotion

AniMotion is a brand new project for me.

My team and I have approached it from a completely new direction and it has been an incredible journey.

It is about the collaboration between art and music - musicians and artists.

Together with the Russian Artist Maria Rud, the Cellist Philip Sheppard and the vocal musicians Canty we are going to give a show like no other!

The video's from the link below are examples of what the audience can expect to experience.


http://www.mariarud.com/projects.html



Tickets can be purchased on line only at http://bit.ly/QPuGPi

ENJOY!!

Poetry in motion....

East is east and west is west - so that say and next week I will be heading Eastward to perform in Peking with the Nuremberg Symphoniker Orchester as part of the Festival of Beijing.

For me the colours in China represent a poetic feast for the eyes. Each time I visit I feel the vibration of colours surrounding me and I want to be carried away on a tide of colourful waves.

In music we often speak about sound as a colour spectrum, musical sound colours are where east meets west in a way and colour becomes sound and vice versa. They are inseparable yet different, the one and the same and yet individual. Like poetry they take the reader through a variety of passages. Flowing and separating then coming back together - uniting us without our surroundings and connecting us through our emotions

I was honoured to receive the poem below this week, written by Tina Negus. When I read the poem I felt its poignancy and I fully understood the correlation she makes between percussion and our environment, these observations are very real for me. Throughout my life I have enjoyed exploring all sound surfaces from squeaky moist windows to the fabric of my coat - sound is everything and we are the sound in everything or perhaps you know different?

The percussionist

(a small tribute to Evelyn Glennie)

Drums mark the rhythm

of the melting icicle and the dripping tap,

the interval between the beats decreasing with precision

as the tempo rises.

Music lives in the silent lines

raked into the gravel of the samurai garden,

echoes in the surge of shingle on the highland shore,

lingers in the attenuated note

of the distant sunlit horizon.

The percussionist plays the rusty xylophone

of farmyard scrap, the breeze ripples the puddled reflections

of the cowshed wall, shimmers the corrugations,

provides the visual score.

Smashed glass in the derelict warehouse

paints a crescendo of recent events, a static explosion,

the pigeon’s cooing in contrapuntal harmony

resounds from staircase and rafter,

the distant descant of metal sheets waving loosely

in the urban wind.

Mirrored glass distorts the urban architecture

into a cadenza of modernity,

chanting the times to unhearing ears,

to unseeing eyes.

The roots of rhythm are all about us,

music is within us,

in our blood,

in the fugue of our heart,

in our breathing,

our inspiration.

We are the sound.

Your comments on Tina's poem would be most welcome.