Percussionist Glennie hears with her body

Listening to percussionist Evelyn Glennie talk about a new concerto is always a revelation.

"It's the world premiere, and I've been working on it for some time," says the Scottish artist in her lilting burr, describing Margaret Brouwer's "Aurolucent Circles" — which will be heard for the first time on Thursday in Benaroya Hall, with Gerard Schwarz and the Seattle Symphony.

"It's a beautiful piece, with a lot of golden-type sound from vibraphones, bells, cymbals and tam-tam. Not a concerto with a lot of drumming."

Not every percussionist would describe sound in terms of color, but Glennie is decidedly one who marches to her own different drummer. Profoundly deaf (though not totally deaf) since the age of 12, she perceives sound in an entirely different way from most musicians — as an extension of her sense of touch. She does it primarily through vibrations she picks up with her body and with her feet (she performs barefoot), though Glennie herself has a hard time telling you exactly how that happens. We all perceive sound as vibration, through our ears and sometimes through our bodies (think of standing beside a parade as a marching band goes past). Essentially, Glennie says, she uses her whole body to hear, in a process she has spent years refining (beginning by working with her music teachers at school).

Glennie had perfect pitch before losing her hearing, an attribute that might have helped her in her process of learning to distinguish the pitch of notes by associating where on her body she felt the sound. The low sounds she feels mainly in her legs and feet; high sounds might be particular places on her face, neck and chest.

Earlier, Glennie used hearing aids but gradually discovered they were of limited use, especially for music. They made things louder but didn't improve the quality of sound. During her teens, she abandoned the hearing aids and learned to rely instead on her own perceptions of vibrations.

Multifaceted artist

A fascinating essay on Evelyn's hearing can be found on her Web site, www.evelyn.co.uk, where you will discover that "she needs to lip-read to understand speech but her awareness of the acoustics in a concert venue is excellent. For instance, she will sometimes describe an acoustic in terms of how thick the air feels."

In a Web site essay on the subject of "disability," Glennie says, "In some respects my hearing is superior to the average non-impaired person. I simply hear in a different way to most people. Other people apply the categories, but to me and some others like me these particular categories are irrelevant."

The Web site also tells you how much more there is to this musician than the fact of her deafness, fascinating though that may be. First of all, she's an exceptionally successful solo percussionist with an international career, extending from the finest concert stages to "MTV Unplugged," and she directs a percussion festival in Lucerne. She designs percussion instruments; she paints; she has extensively promoted new works from a long list of composers; she creates music for film and television (including an upcoming Discovery Channel documentary); and she offers $1,000 music scholarships for children with hearing loss.

"I want to encourage young children to work toward playing instruments, to encourage their basic musicality," Glennie said in a recent phone interview. (An assistant relays the questions, and Glennie, whose speech is perfectly clear, replies with the answers.)

"People are inclined to assume that deaf people cannot play music. That's not true."

The winner of 53 awards, including Britain's O.B.E. (Order of the British Empire) and a Grammy, Glennie has made 16 solo recordings and plays about 110 concerts a season around the world. She plays every familiar percussion instrument and a lot of unfamiliar ones, playing instruments she has designed (using such materials as a car muffler) in multimedia concerts, improv evenings and recitals.

The percussionist also has hosted two series of her own TV programs, called "Soundbites," for the BBC, interviewing top soloists.

Concert reviewers have a hard time coming up with appropriate superlatives for her performances, which regularly are accorded standing ovations. The New York Times has called Glennie "the percussion world's Segovia or Rampal," and stated that "her musicianship is extraordinary. One has to pause in sheer wonder at what she has accomplished. She is quite simply a phenomenon of a performer."

There are some unexpected costs to all this. Glennie says she has to think carefully about what she's going to play in each concert, because of the cost of transporting her instruments by air — in as many as 35-40 flight cases. Sometimes her entire earnings go into transportation expenses.

Next, the bagpipes

Not surprisingly for one who grew up on a farm in northeast Scotland, Glennie also has gravitated toward the Highland bagpipes, which she has "loved since my early years. I started serious study four or five years ago — the pipes are pretty popular throughout Scotland, as you can imagine. And I was curious! But of course they will take a lifetime of study. I've done some performing, with orchestra, of Sir Maxwell Davies' 'Orkney Wedding,' which has a nice part for bagpipes."

As you might expect from a musician who stretches the usual definitions of the senses, Glennie has a different take on painting too. She doesn't just paint what she sees; she paints what she hears. "I paint actual (musical) pieces that I'm playing," she explains.

"I can see the progress of the music on the canvas. I translate the sounds and the emotions from those sounds into the color world, really, showing the sound of the music by the depth of the color. You can show all kinds of musical things in paint: the intensity of the sound, the hardness or softness of the music. For me, the most important sense for a musician is the sense of touch, and that sense can be expressed in paint too."

The paintings are "fairly abstract," Glennie says.

"We definitely need to explore beyond the five senses," Glennie believes. "Most of us never have lessons or discussions on how to listen. But something of listening is not just through the ears. There are many things about the ways we perceive the world around us that are poorly understood, and we need to be open to that. Once you understand that there are different ways to listen, it's like picking up an unknown book that is fascinating and changes your ideas, and even your life, forever."

Melinda Bargreen: mbargreen@seattletimes.com.