Touch The Sound

A Sound Journey With Evelyn Glennie

In the multi award-winning film Touch The Sound, German director Thomas Riedelsheimer turns his camera on nearly deaf percussionist Evelyn Glennie who experiences sound as a kind of touching or vibration. Glennie is certainly a fascinating subject. Profoundly deaf since childhood, she disdains the use of hearing aids and sign language, relying instead on lip reading and, more crucially, on the use of all of her senses, especially touch, to "hear" with her entire body.

Using Glennie's unique musical sensibilities as a jumping-off point Riedelsheimer introduces the viewer to an amazing sonic realm that we all know but rarely appreciate – a world of tapping, sputtering, clanging, rustling rhythms. The drone of a suitcase's wheels on concrete interrupted by the periodic zing of a zipper, the crackling of an icy pond, the echoic clang of metal scaffolding struck by Glennie's shoe – these sounds become in Riedelsheimer's skilled hands moments of revelation. Watching this film, viewers will feel like they are hearing the world for the first time. (99 min.)