Percussionist creates striking music

By Gus Kairupan

JAKARTA (JP): "Not much music has been written for the snare drum," Evelyn Glennie, explaining about the instrument and its in Scottish music.

Right she is. And not much music has been written either for most other percussion instruments: kettledrums, xylophones, marimbas, etc.

It's in western music, mind you, that there is a dearth of works for percussion instruments. In other non-western musical traditions, like gamelan, percussion instruments are the most important element.

The 20th century brought about a change in the role of percussion instruments in the west. Bartok, for instance, composed a concerto for strings, percussion and celesta, but that is practically the only major work along symphonic lines that springs to mind. Of course, there is jazz -- probably the one musical expression which has contributed enormously to the elevation of percussion instruments to a prominent rank, especially ones that have no definite pitch, such as bongos, cymbals, rattles, and drums, including the snare drum Evelyn Glennie played as a solo instrument.

Evelyn Glennie is small, not much more than 1.50 metres tall, with very attractive, even beautiful, features framed by a mass of light brown hair cascading just below the shoulders. The daintiness she projects would probably make men of this century regret that dragons have long ceased to exist.

But all that fragility is deceptive. Her arms and hands -- especially when holding mallets -- pack a wallop capable of flooring any dragon foolish enough to interfere with her. Not that the music she makes consists only of banging away at marimbas and drums.

Listen to A Little Prayer, her own composition, caressing the marimba keys to coax the soft and gentle melody out of them. With this small piece, more than with any of the compositions played at two recent concerts, she proved that in this day and age of atonality, anti-tonality, non-tonality, minimalism, and whatever else today's composers do, there's still an awful lot of value in the simple "do-re-mi" systems.

The two concerts here on Saturday and Sunday, sponsored by the British Council were in aid of the Indonesian Red Cross, were held at the Jakarta Hilton Convention Center and Taman Mini Indonesia Indah. The latter was attended by President Soeharto and Mrs. Tien Soeharto.

The program, similar at both concerts, was divided into two parts, the first featuring western compositions in some of which she was accompanied by pianist Philip Smith. She achieved a resounding success at both concerts, as a performer of western compositions but even more so as a participant in the gamelan ensemble of STSI in Surakarta.

The concerts, billed as Rhythms of Harmony, though still experimental in nature, thus blended two different musical traditions but not to the extent that one deferred to the other, or that one was subordinate to the other. This means, roughly, that the western instruments did not confine themselves to e.g. following or approximating the five notes in the Javanese/Sundanese scales or rhythmic patterns.

Neither did the gamelan instruments imitate the western instruments or melodic and rhythmic patterns. The objective of the exercise was for the individual components to complement one another, as in the work entitled Pibrokan for Marimba and Gamelan, by Neil Sorrel, composed especially for Ms. Glennie.

Deafness hasn't been an obstacle, or at least was one that she overcame more than successfully. The intensity of her concentration as she turned to Philip Smith during his solo sections and the way she never took her eyes off her partner and co-percussionist in the piece entitled Lalahu were the only signs of the affliction, provided one is aware of it.

To Evelyn Glennie, being deaf is no more problematic than being, well, too fat or too thin, too tall or too short. She lip- reads of course, and with a fluency that enables her to follow and understand those who do not share her mother tongue. In other words, lip-speaking (I can't find a better term as an opposite to lip-reading) is, apparently, also subject to accents foreign to the lip-reader.

Her performances here are the fulfillment of a long-cherished ideal to play in Indonesia and get better acquainted with Indonesian musical traditions. The same can be said for the forms of music in other countries where she has performed. Her appearance here follows one in South Korea and after her performances and the masterclass she is to conduct, she will be going to New Zealand. Those are just three of the approximately 120 concerts she gives annually. How does she manage to keep up such a back-breaking schedule that involves the transportation of quite a lot of cumbersome material? "It's no problem, really. I have sets of instruments in the places I perform regularly," Ms. Glennie said.

Let's hope she'll place one here.