Dame Evelyn Glennie listens to music with her whole body, just not with her ears. Though technically deaf, the renowned percussionist developed a technique of playing with the vibrations in her instruments and environment, and after graduating from the Royal Academy of Music in London in 1985, she pioneered a career as the first full-time solo percussionist in the world. She has collaborated with orchestras and visual artists, composers and choreographers, and a wide array of singers, including Bjork, Bela Fleck, and Sting. Glennie opens the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra 95th season on September 28 and 30 with “Musicophilia,” a commissioned piece from Canadian composer Randolph Peters that explores conditions described in Oliver Sacks’s book of the same title. Using an interlocutor, Glennie spoke with BLOUIN ARTINFO Canada about tuning out the noise and staying in the moment, however it sounds.

Vancouver Symphony Orchestra
Conductor: Bramwell Tovey
Orpheum Theater, Vancouver
28 & 30 September 2013