Touch the Sound

What is it about?

"Touch the Sound" starring Evelyn Glennie started production in August 2002. Locations included California , New York , Belfast , Scotland , England and Japan . The crew encountered Fog horns , Kendo-fighters, the Cuban jazz drummer Horazio Hernadez, the Japanese Taiko drummers of Ondekoza, the guitars of Steve Hackett, a street tap-dancer and the Sony electric robot-dog.

Evelyn was drumming in the New York Grand Central Station, at the top of a skyscraper, in the lobby of the Guggenheim Museum , on a dust-bin on the beach of Santa Cruz and with Chop Sticks on plates in a Japanese coffee shop. More filming took place in Scotland , San Francisco and London , where Evelyn had been recording a new CD.

Evelyn lives in this universe in a way that almost no-one else does. Together with her, this film will dive into the world of sound and rhythms - into the world of our origins.

Themes

The first sensory impressions a person experiences are vibrations, rhythms and sounds. The heartbeat of the mother, the way breathing makes the abdomen rise and fall, noises - long before the eye awakens. Our own heart connects us to the world - it is our own personal metronome. Its beats tell us about ourselves and our illnesses, our fears and longings - its rhythm is the most important musical unit of measurement. The relationship between the pulse and music is reciprocal and complex. Music can heal, depress, unleash and "speak from the heart". Percussion can take us into primordial states, such as dreams and trances - for rhythm is very powerful. Our hearts slow down or accelerate to the rhythm of the music we listen to - a fact which is medically measurable. The body seems to synchronise itself with the vibrations of the environment. We are embedded in a universe of cycles and rhythms.

Rhythm is the basis of every life form. Rhythm is movement, flow, change, renewal - and repetition. It is only in rhythm that we can experience time. Without vibration, without oscillation, there is standstill, there is nothing. Our ideas of stability, of firmness, are illusions. Everything oscillates and vibrates - from the bridge of steel and concrete to the energy shells around an atom. We recognise and experience our world through oscillations, through rhythms - even colours oscillate at different frequencies. Everything vibrates, everything "speaks" - a universe of sound.

Time

to perceive and experience time means "to listen to" these rhythms. Breathing, rustling leaves, traffic, the seasons, the new dawn. Our sense of time had its origins in the understanding of the repetitions and renewals in nature. Day and night, summer and winter, seed-time and harvest and, of course, pulse and breathing again.

"There is a time for everything" - unfortunately this wise old saying is increasingly suppressed by a normalised "standard time". Time can no longer be experienced individually, moving in cycles, flexible in its perception. Instead we increasingly allow ourselves to be pushed into the dictates of a mechanical, "unnatural" and inhuman time. We are involved in a uniform, linear countdown, with the ultimate "zero" always before us. We reduce life to regular squares on a grid. The structure of underground stations or building façades, the central reservations of the roads - digitalised bits and beats. A static architecture of speed.

Hearing

Since the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, the individual has been the central focus in the world. Painting developed the central perspective which defines the location of subject and object and thereby makes manifest the individual ego. The eye became the tool with which modern humans perceived and discovered the world around them. Science orientated itself by visible proof - "I believe what I see". The construction of our modern view of the world has resulted in the devaluation of our sense of hearing, giving way to the "tyranny of the eye". Today there is no more story-telling, instead things are printed and read. "Listening to one another" has been replaced by solitary staring at the screen and internet "chat". But the eye is a "work tool". Its perception is focused, it can be directed and it can be closed.

The ear, in contrast, is unfocused, cannot be closed and is designed to be more comprehensive. Some call it the instrument of life. Hearing seems to be an integral and integrating process. It could perhaps also be said that the ear works "unintentionally". The ear seems to connect us with the world, while the eye individualises us.

Playing with the senses. Do we hear leaves rustling, even when we actually only see them? Do we feel the stream which we only hear? Is red loud or soft? How underdeveloped is our untrained ear, deluged as it is with a constant stream of sound?

Every sound is a universe in itself. The first beat, the fine timbre, the reverberation. The transition into silence and the silence itself. The sound of silence. I have never met anyone before who has such a finely developed sense of the quality of sounds as Evelyn. When she plays her two-metre high tam-tam, coaxing from it a tone which gradually swells and expands over the course of several minutes, producing a sound which seems to surround your whole body like a tidal wave, it is an elemental experience. I would happily dive deeper with her into the incredibly rich universe which is revealed by the world of sound.

The concept of the film will consist of documentary scenes combined with free association, with interpretative images and sounds. I am not aiming for a philosophical film essay, nor do I want the strict documentary style of "cinema vérité". I want a film which is neither commentary nor concert. I would like a sensual film - a cinema film. A film about a person and her passion which touches all of us.

Maybe along the lines of a surrealism which aims to look "beyond the appearance of things" (the sliced eye in "un chien andalou" by Buñuel!) Solid forms dissolving in oscillations or reflections. Making visible rhythms which are, in themselves, invisible or unnoticed, maybe also in the macro sphere or inside the body. I am fully aware of the proximity of this to the colourful world of music videos, however, I think I will be able to achieve something more in this respect.

The film will be a sensory journey. A journey into the world of rhythms and sounds with a visual transport medium.

Thomas Riedelsheimer, October 2001

Directors Statements

SOUNDTRACK AND DVD:

The soundtrack CD, called "Touch the Sound" is now available at

WWW.AMAZON.DE and search or use this direct link.

der Soundtrack von Touch the Sound ist ab sofort erhältlich. z.b. bei

WWW.AMAZON.DE suchen oder direkt .

The distributor is INDIGO , the producer is Normal Records .

DVD release date to be confirmed.

OTHER WEBSITES:

Film Quadrat

Skyline

www.touch-the-sound.com

www.touchthesound.co.uk

PRESS:

The Scotsman - Richard Mowe - 17th August 04

The Scotsman - Richard Mowe, 16th August 04

Sunday Herald - Vicky Allan - 15th August 04 Sunday Herald - Senay Boztas, 18th July 04. EG Images, Dame Evelyn Glennie, Percussion, photograph, instruments, jewellery, Gems, Bespoke, Opal, Citrine Saphire, Ruby, Topaz, Beryl,composer, speaker, education,evelyn glennie, Glennie, Evelyn, music, musician,percussion, percussionist, innovator, composer, EG Images, EG Live, EG Jewellery, jewelery, silver, precious metal, boutique crafts, technology, performers,marimba, drums, drummer, marimbist, YouTube, film clips, fred frith, Trilok Gurtu,vibraphone, multi-percussionist, inspiring, inspirational, Veni Veni, groundbreaking,Cambridgeshire, Scottish, Scottish women,Radical thinking, classical music, reform, rethinking, stale,international, Music business professionals, professional, conductors, orchestras, orchestral, photography, photographer, James Wilson, Carla Leete, Brenda-Gillian, Hearing essay, disability essay, Touch the Sound, Shadow behind the Iron Sun, The BBC Proms, 1965, July, nineteen, nineteenth, 19th, Evelyn Elizabeth Anne,Honorary doctor, honorary doctorate, The Red Book, This is Your Life, Royalty

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