To hear, one must truly listen

Evelyn Glennie amazes as she coaxes music out of just about any surface she can hit, strike, tap, brush or stroke. But just how this phenomenal Scottish percussionist manages to make music out of all this -- considering that she is profoundly deaf -- has been something of a mystery.

That mystery is why “Rivers and Tides” director-cinematographer-editor Thomas Riedelsheimer says he devoted three years to his new documentary about Glennie.

“I was so struck by her,” the filmmaker said in a recent phone interview from New York, where his film opened Wednesday. “What was amazing was not so much the music itself but the way she is in it. That finally became the subject -- not music, but sound and the ability to feel the sounds around us.

“What I try to do with my films is to raise a central awareness of what is going on around us, the sounds that we are embedded in and don’t notice and don’t care about.”

Shot on Super-16 Eastmancolor stock that was then edited and blown up to 35-millimeter, the documentary tracks Glennie performing in 16 locations, including Grand Central Station in Manhattan and her family farm in Aberdeenshire, Scotland.

It shows her collaborating with the taiko drumming group Za Ondekoza in Japan and with guitarist Fred Frith in an abandoned but acoustically wondrous sugar factory in Cologne, Germany. (Riedelsheimer lives and works in Munich.)

The filmmaker says the three years he spent on the project broke down into one year for raising money, another for filming and a third for postproduction and editing.

“The shooting took one year due to Evelyn’s schedule,” he said. “We did bits and pieces here and there to fit into her schedule.”

In most of the locations, he used a single microphone and only one traveling camera “to avoid many cuts and edits to the flow in the film.”

“One thing I was really concerned about at the beginning was getting the right sound quality,” he said. “I wanted to pick out different sounds we have in everyday life but don’t pay attention to, like the rolling suitcases at the airport.

“It’s all connected to this idea that nothing is still. If you have a complete stillness, as Evelyn says, if nothing is moving, that’s probably close to death.”

Death might well have become part of the film: Two days after the shoot in Aberdeenshire was complete, the farm burned to the ground because of a gas leak. Neither Glennie’s brother, Roger, nor the animals were harmed, however.

“Evelyn was not at the farm when it burned down,” Riedelsheimer said. “It was not even insured. But she is helping them rebuild it. It was really strange. For me, Scotland was a kind of romantic idyll. Then there was this tragedy.”

Like the 2002 “Rivers and Tides” -- about British environmental artist Andy Goldsworthy -- the new film lacked a built-in narrative structure. So Riedelsheimer had to invent one.

“In the end, you have to turn to trial and error,” he said.

Glennie’s website, www.evelyn.co.uk, gives one explanation of how she learned to “hear” music after she started going deaf at age 8:

“Evelyn spent a lot of time when she was young [with the help of Ron Forbes, her percussion teacher at school] refining her ability to detect vibrations. She would stand with her hands against the classroom wall while Ron played notes on the timpani [timpani produce a lot of vibrations]. Eventually Evelyn managed to distinguish the rough pitches of notes by associating where on her body she felt the sound with the sense of perfect pitch she had before losing her hearing. The low sounds she feels mainly in her legs and feet, and high sounds might be particular places on her face, neck and chest.”

But Riedelsheimer’s film immerses you in the experience, making it all concrete, especially during a scene in which Glennie teaches a young deaf girl how to also “feel the sound.”

“Evelyn heard when she was a child, but this girl never had any hearing,” said Riedelsheimer. “What happens on her face as she ‘hears’ is amazing.”

Working with Glennie was easy, the director said. “She was very willing to compromise. The only thing where she really stood her ground was when her music was concerned. About her performing, she’s really tough.”

Riedelsheimer said he would not be coming to Los Angeles for the film’s opening here.

“I’m doing research for a new film,” he said. “The next film will be not about a single artist, not a kind of portrait, but an approach to the Vietnam War, about wounds that never heal. It won’t be a report or a history. It will be something poetical.”