Mummy I want a drum for Christmas

When your child asks for a drum for Christmas - rather than run a mile! consider this

 Prim by the Icelandic composer Askell Masson

My first drum and practice pad

Letter to Santa

When I was a child I wanted a musical instrument for Christmas. Now I am an adult I would like every child to have the opportunity to play and hopefully enjoy music regardless of culture, ability, crede or social circumstances. http://www.youtube.com/user/dameevelynglennie

So please Santa do your best despite the world recession, greed and poverty.

What would you ask Santa for?

What pops your Cork?

It is a glorious day here in Cork, Ireland. The sun is shining and I am feeling great! I hope you are experiencing this wonderful weather so late in November and that you are able to feel the warmth of the sunshine on your face before it disappears for the day.

Corcaigh (the Irish spelling for Cork) is thought to be the real capital of Ireland by those who inhabit this beautiful city. From my hotel on the Quay over looking the River Lee I can see a very vibrant and stunning sight and it all looks very exciting to me and I cannot wait to take a closer look before I begin rehearsing.

I am told this is the Isle of Shamrock and Leprechauns who like a drop of home brew now and again. Apparently 'they never become so drunk that the hand which holds the hammer becomes unsteady and their shoemaker's work affected'. I hope this works for me too because I definitely feel in high spirits today!

Cork is the home of so much inspirational musical influences including the Cork School of Music where I will be performing later today and I hope you will find time to join me.

What picture is my body painting?

In response to a question from Lisa in Sweden who mentioned that she is currently doing a photo documentary project at a church involving many shoots of musician’s and also listeners attending the services and events. 

Lisa said “If you have any thoughts on how to really show the making of music and the act of listening in photography I'd be really keen to hear your opinion” – I would like to suggest Lisa concentrates on taking close up images of the people who are actually listening to music or playing music concentrating on the detail. 

In my opinion good musicians ‘experience’ the music and listeners relay the music being played to something meaningful in the brain. As we do this our bodies, both as musicians and listeners, often reflect our feelings and emotions. 

If we are listening to an upbeat piece of music we may tap with our toes or fingers. Alternatively if the music is soft and gentle we may relax or sway with the rhythm.

Likewise if we are keen to be educated about something we demonstrate this by paying attention. We engage with the tutor. Eye contact becomes key as we listen carefully.

Ultimately, the human has to create the sound, even if it's done electronically and the human has to participate in the listening process. Therefore I believe that by capturing the human activity of listening and creating sound is the key. 

Utilising the idea that the audience is part of the performance/event by how they sit, tilt their head, position of body, where the eyes are focussing, young, old, formal, informal and so on seems to me to be one way of demonstrating visually how that person is feeling and what they are engaging with which leads to the question for the tutor – is that person listening to what I am saying? Can I see that from their body language if they understand what I am teaching them? 

The same applies for musicians, by concentrating on close ups of limbs such as the movement and mechanics of fingers or facial muscles you should be able offer the viewer an ability to see effort, strength and how the body is supporting the instrument and vice versa.

Try to capture movement of bows or mallets. Examine how feet move when playing. By allowing movement into your photographs you will be demonstrating the whole and parts of the body and how it is experiencing the sound. 

This should create an album of total experience from the action of creating the sound to the activity of listening - what do you think?

My Life in a Plastic Bag….

 

Here I am again at Heathrow airport I have been debagged, checked in and now I am eagerly awaiting for that final degradation of going through security. As I stand patiently waiting for all my possessions to be scanned and viewed by people who I have never met and the possible additional delight of being frisked, I look down at my little plastic bag and begin to reflect on my life.

My virtual reflective ‘little plastic bag’ contains an interesting mix. I have met and worked with some amazing people. Along the way my ideas, inspirations and achievements have been shaped, moulded, guided and strengthened by people.

They say that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger and that can certainly be true of many things that we all encounter along the way. As I stand quietly in this interminable queue I think back to the freedom of living on a farm way up in the North of Scotland. My life seemed very simple, I knew that I wanted to be a percussionist and nothing was going to stop me.

I shared those feelings with Thomas Reidelsheimer in the film Touch the Sound which has been a great backdrop for my career.

I look down at the scant makeup in my Heathrow standard edition see through container and I consider what to wear when I appear on the stage with the talented Maya Beiser when we perform the new piece titled ‘Stuttered Chant’ at the UCLA. I think about the unusual piece I am going to play written by David Lang and his brief to me about enjoying the experience of creating sounds from a Cello –an instrument not usually amongst my arsenal!

Isn’t it amazing the things that go through your mind when you are standing in a queue clasping a little plastic bag!

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!

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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.

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