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Signum Vision SIGDVD006 This is a remarkable film, impossible to not enjoy and admire, difficult to describe in words. Thomas Riedelsheimer is a special photographer/film maker, with an eye that selects and maximises the impact of his images. The subject is Dame Evelyn Glennie, a famously exceptional musician and percussionist, whose response to deafness is at the root of her self discovery and special place in the world; she feels music with the whole of her body whereas the rest of us think we hear it with our ears - an oversimplification and misconception, so she believes and explains. World wide 'percussion travels' are underpinned with improvised CD recording sessions in a derelict sugar factory warehouse. However good that resultant CD may be, made with her new My link above takes you to a duet by Glennie herself ("Prayer") towards the end of this film, which shows Frith adept with what can be done with a guitar besides playing it normally. A meditative piece, being recorded in that warehouse, it cannot represent the musical richness and vitality of this whole film, which gives a picture of Glennie's international lifestyle* and ceaseless explorations of the world and of herself in her late thirties. The 23 mins "extra" gives us great illumination about the creation of this remarkable document, a feeling for the world of Thomas Riedelsheimer, and especially his explaining with candour his difficulty with 'free improvisation" in having to come to terms with a situation which, by its nature, he cannot control. The (anonymous) introduction in the booklet expresses the whole venture so well that it should not be paraphrased. Recommended with greatest enthusiasm; Signum Vision is fast becoming an essential label for unique and innovative music DVDs. See Musical Pointers' welcome to those of Tony Britten's Falstaff and the King's Singers; a radical Boheme soon to follow. Peter Grahame Woolf *TRACKS
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