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It may have been a somewhat smaller audience than the 80,000 packed into the Olympic stadium for the opening ceremony, but when Dame Evelyn Glennie strode across the stage of the magnificent Philharmonic Hall in Liverpool to take her place behind the Marimbas which dominated the stage, the reception the First Lady of percussion received from the near sell-out auditorium was no less rapturous.
Dame Evelyn, you may recall, led 1,000 volunteer drummers at the event that mesmerised the world, as the Industrial Revolution unfolded and the blazing Olympic rings were hoisted into the night sky above. This evening, she is here in support of DaDaFest –the increasingly popular Deaf and Disabled Arts Festival first unveiled in 2000 and which has grown in popularity, size and stature year on year.
A short support session provided by the Pagoda Chinese Youth Orchestra and the Liverpool Signing Choir – who had their own taste of Olympic glory at the closing ceremony during which they signed John Lennon’s Imagine to great acclaim – premiered a fusion of Nursery Rhymes, American Folk tunes and old English standards on authentic Chinese Instruments, may have set the mood, but it was the maestro who took things to a whole new level.
Dame Evelyn has been profoundly deaf since birth and says that she quite literally “feels” the music. That this is the festival organisers coup de gras, however, is an understatement and the recital Dame Evelyn provided was every bit as inspirational as the talk she gave afterwards, prior to a Q & A session that was every bit as enlightening.
With regards to the performance, the evocative Prim – a multi-rhythm, cross genre piece played on a single snare drum and composed by Askell Masson – and Waterphone Improvisation – a quirky work performed on one of the strangest looking instruments that resembles a sinister looking hamster cage without a roof – will live long in the memory.
Yet it is the talk that Dame Evelyn gave – how she was first given a single snare to take home aged 8, having been told to “feel” the instrument by her tutor and to become “as one with the sound it provides” – that proved so uplifting in showing that it is a thin line between success and failure.
Had Glennie not let curiosity get hold of her and not experimented over that first week by hitting not just the skin of the drum, but its sides, its edges, its underneath and on varying surfaces, then the world would have missed out on one of its greatest musicians; which underlines the fact that – regardless of ability and disability – the line between “Can” and Cannot”, “Will do” and “Will not do” is one that exists in the mind alone.
Her first appearance in Liverpool since 2001, it can only be hoped that Dame Evelyn Glennie does not leave it quite so long before she returns and that DaDaFest – a festival that highlights the ability of disability so superbly well – continues to go from strength-to-strength and year on fabulous year.
10/10
www.dadafest.co.uk
August 19th, 2012
Support: Pagoda Chinese Youth Orchestra, Liverpool Signing Choir, Shanghai Deaf School
Producer: DaDaFest (Deaf and Disabled Arts Festival) Liverpool
Running Time: 2 hrs 15 mins
 Robert Day.JPG)
