Synopsis
“As a girl in Scotland, gifted at a variety of musical instruments, Evelyn Glennie seemed inevitably destined for a career in music — until she began to go deaf. By 13, her loss of hearing was profound; yet strengthened by the love of her late father, she became a world-renowned percussionist. Today, the adult Glennie is an uninhibited seeker of expressive sounds in the least likely of places. She will tap chopsticks against girders, bang toys against railings, investigate steam pipes with finger cymbals or play vast, empty echoes against one another — the world is her drum, and from it she wrings an eccentric, sonic beauty. (Small wonder Björk is prominent among her long list of collaborators.)



Filmmaker Thomas Riedelsheimer, who so memorably penetrated the world of nature-sculptor Andy Goldsworthy in Rivers and Tides, mates that accomplishment with this equally poetic, elegantly photographed, crisply edited ‘interior’ documentary. So at home in his subject’s gift is Riedelsheimer that we’re well into the film before we even realize Glennie is deaf. She’s a lucid, eloquent speaker, her lilting Scot’s burr having been well-formed before her tragedy — and moreover, her music (improvised here with longtime collaborator Fred Frith) is trance-inducing. The film’s discretion short-circuits any impulse we might have to regard Glennie as a handicapped person who has ‘overcome.’ Instead, we’re led to experience her life as she does — as an adventure in which setbacks are not challenges, but illuminations of untracked paths.” –F. X. Feeney, LA Reader