Touch the sound

Seeing sounds and hearing images. In this documentary by Thomas Riedelsheimer about the musician Evelyn Glennie, this may be nowhere near as difficult as it might seem at first glance. Evelyn has been deaf since birth, but she managed to find her own path to music and tones. It was enough to "touch" them. As sound moves through the air it creates slight vibrations and Evelyn Glennie gradually cultivated an ability that resembles in principle the function of cat whiskers. She can feel the presence of tones, which a hearing person would never notice. At her performances and concerts and when she is teaching students with hearing disabilities she mainly uses percussion instruments. She makes no distinction between using old Asian gongs or a beer can, or between being in the concert hall or an old factory filled with pipes that can be played on, or in a train station with a massive dome ceiling and outstanding acoustics. The director Thomas Riedelsheimer appears of the course of the documentary as an attentive student of this musical shaman of Scottish origin. Shots of dripping faucets, cars running over a crack in the asphalt, or the constant scraping of escalators recall other instruments in the orchestra of sounds that surround and inspire us. It is just that we have ceased to notice them.