A Different Drummer

By MICHAEL WALSH/CINCINNATI

The art of music so utterly depends on the perception of sound that it seems inconceivable for one to exist without the other. One can imagine a deaf composer if, as in the case of Beethoven, he spent decades absorbed in the world of pitch and melody before silence held sway. Music, after all, is first composed in the mind's ear, and it is no great feat for professionals to be able to "hear" a musical score simply by reading it. But a deaf performer? To hit all the right notes, to play in an ensemble or in front of an orchestra as the featured soloist? Surely this requires the ability not only to hear, but to hear, as well, with a musician's acuity -- doesn't it?

Consider Evelyn Glennie, a small, vivacious Scotswoman who has been "profoundly deaf" since she was 12. Glennie is a full-time percussion soloist -- the only one in the classical field -- and one of today's brightest young stars on any instrument. "People have the wrong idea about deafness," says Glennie, 28, currently in the midst of an American concert tour that is taking her to Cincinnati, Washington and Cleveland. "They think you live in a world of total silence, but that isn't the way it works."

Glennie relates to her battery of instruments through her sense of touch; to heighten her sensitivity to vibrations, she likes to perform barefoot. She conceives of her concerts in terms of the play of colors and emotions. During rehearsal, she will station an adviser in the hall to help her gauge dynamic levels, but otherwise her concessions to deafness are few. "I don't think in terms of loud and soft," says Glennie. "Instead I think of sounds as thin or fat, strong or weak. The amount of sounds you can create with just one cymbal are infinite."

Sharp-eyed and keen, Glennie reads lips so fluently that an interlocutor would never know she cannot hear. In performance she watches the conductor and orchestra with a fierce intensity, picking up visual cues and bounding from instrument to instrument with the grace of a natural athlete. She often gets a workout: Dominic Muldowney's astringent Concerto for Percussion, subtitled Figure in a Landscape, which she performed with the Cincinnati Symphony late last month, employs cymbals, marimba, Japanese bells, a pair of bongos, two congas, a vibraphone, four small drums, four wood blocks and several boobams, which are tuned cylindrical tubes open on one end and covered by a small drumskin at the other. The piece, difficult for player and listener alike, had her leaping from one station to another with a gazelle's grace, smacking each instrument in turn both accurately and mellifluously.

Starting at age eight, for reasons that are still unclear, Glennie's auditory nerves gradually deteriorated and she lost most of her hearing. Today she can just barely discern the loud ring of a telephone right next to her ear, and she can sense rather than hear the rumble of a jet plane overhead. Her determination and natural talent, however, were enough to qualify her for London's Royal Academy of Music, where she graduated with honors. Glennie then compounded her professional challenge by setting out as a soloist instead of a rank-and-file orchestral player. Plenty of people make a living playing the piano, violin, flute or cello. But how many live off their skill with the snare drum, the marimba, the xylophone? Beethoven, after all, never wrote a percussion concerto.

Percussion, in fact, did not come into its own until the mid-20th century, which is one reason why the repertory is so sparse. Glennie is an active commissioner of new works, among them fellow Scotsman James MacMillan's Veni, Veni, Emmanuel, a thorny, dissonant, virtuoso showpiece that got its triumphant American premiere a fortnight ago in Washington. She works closely with composers, advising on matters of technique and, in return for her commission, extracting a promise that the score will be hers exclusively for one year. Her taste runs also to arrangements of Chopin and Joplin, as well as to Japanese and Brazilian music, part of an eclectic approach that is winning her fans around the world.

Although she is affiliated with some 40 organizations for the deaf in Britain, Glennie downplays discussion of her charity work; she would rather be known as a role model for all young musicians, not just young deaf people. And model she is. She performs some 120 concerts a year, a number the newlywed Glennie would prefer to reduce in order to spend more time at home near Cambridge with her husband, Greg Malcangi, a recording engineer. The flying Scot also has been the subject of two British and one American TV documentaries and even wrote an autobiography at the age of 24. The inevitable title: Good Vibrations.

Still, she remains focused on her principal task of elevating percussion music to the level of more conventional instruments. So when she says, "if it inspires other people that I'm able to do this, then wonderful," she is referring to timbal and timpani. As for the inspirational nature of defying deafness, she doesn't really want to hear about it.