Touch the Sound 2004

The percussionist Evelyn Glennie, deaf since childhood, is an astoundingly versatile musician performing with the world’s leading symphony orchestras (including ours). She’s equally enthusiastic about joining a Manhattan busker for an impromptu duet, adding her unique colours to a Japanese drum ensemble, or collaborating in Cologne with guitar virtuoso Fred Frith. When asked how it is that she ‘hears’ with her body, Glennie asks, quite reasonably, do the rest of us know how we hear with our ears? Riedelsheimer’s seductive portrait is a collaboration too, a meticulously sound-designed device to attune us to the way Glennie picks up the noise of the world, then, making the world her instrument, responds with exquisite, percussive music.

“Gradually and patiently, Riedelsheimer’s trance-inducing film erases the line between the cacophony of the man-made world and the elegance of the natural world. Gorgeously photographed and imbued with a sense of mystery, Touch the Sound is, above all, an ear-opener.” — Michael Fox, San Francisco International Film Festival