Evelyn Glennie

A percussive tour de force from a premier percussionist. This album features bits for various solo trinkets as well as larger ensembles of instruments (still all played by Glennie, with the exception of a piano in "Halasana" and "Matre's Dance"). The music is all the more remarkable given that Glennie is deaf and feels the music through the floorboards to serve as feedback. "Halasana" is a thorough dialogue between the drum kit and the piano, and "Bongo-O" works through a number of methods on the bongos. "Prim" is a piece for solo snare drum, working through rhythmic cycles based on prime numbers, while "The Anvil Chorus" is a workout on a number of metal pieces. "To the Earth" is played entirely on flower pots, "Pezzo da Concerto" focuses solely on the snare again, and "Matre's Dance" works through drums and piano dialogues in an ever-increasing rhythm based loosely upon a passage from -Dune. Sprinkled throughout the album are interludes of Glennie improvising on any number of instruments: woodblocks, cymbals, the udu, the hi-hat, and more. Her virtuosity certainly isn't up for debate here, but for the newcomers to modern percussion music, eight minutes of solo snare drum might well become a bit tiresome. For the initiated, anything by Glennie is already marked with a sense of near-holiness, so this album is another in the line of successes for her, despite the probable lack of mainstream support that follows any sort of art music generally. ~ Adam Greenberg, All Music Guide