Music is so much more than just sound waves hitting our ear drums. We can literally feel music as sound waves pulse through the air and affect our bodies and influence our emotions.
What if you were deaf? Do you think that music would have no meaning to you any longer?
I have been a big fan of percussionist Evelyn Gennie ever since the day I saw the documentary about her titled "Touch the Sound." Her experience has inspired me to re-imagine what it means to listen to music and how we experience sound.
There is now a free online video of a talk Glennie gave at one of the TED events and it's well worth watching. In the video, Glennie teaches us how to listen again.
"What I have to do, as a musician," she says, "is do everything that is not [written down] in the music." The difference is between simply playing the music as it's written on the page, and "interpreting" the music, adding to the performance "the things that you notice when you are not actually at your instrument." I think the "things that you notice" could be anything about the world, yourself, your feelings, your identity, etc, etc.
In this soaring demonstration, percussionist Evelyn Glennie leads the audience through an exploration of music not as notes on a page, but as an expression of the human experience. Playing with sensitivity and nuance informed by a soul-deep understanding of and connection to music.
