Evelyn is a deaf percussionist and musician. Her job is all about listening and her aim is to teach the world how to listen. In a piece of music which is full of black little dots it just tells you technically how to play it, like dynamic, where to play on the drum or which part of the stick to use etc.
What you have to do as a musician is everything that is not in the music. Much more important is the interpretation of the piece, the personality and the character you give to it while playing. Its simply not enough to just play what is in the music. Listen is much more important.
More dynamic with less effort. Just as you need time with the instrument, you need also time with the people to interpret it. You have to think for a piece not as a technician, rather than a musician.
Music is about listening, but how is Evelyn listening? She hears through her body. When she started her lessons with her teacher, they were tuning a timpani differently, but closely together. She can feel the tiniest differences with a small part of her finger.
When she auditioned at the music academy, they first wouldn’t accept her because of her disability of hearing. But she showed them in a second audition how to really listen and changed the whole system for accepting disabled student at a music academy through the UK.
Music and sound could be our daily medicine. Everyone experiences the sound different.
You need to imagine what sound you want to produce. You can for example just create the sensation of sound when we see something. For example, when we just see a tree in the wind, we can hear the sound in our head to it.
Acousticians had to really think about the type of halls. You can absolutely do anything in dynamic in a huge hall. It may sound good over there, but terrible in the back and so on. To find the exact hall how you imagine the sound is incredible.
If we listen to each other it is important to really test our listening skills through our body as a resonating chamber and stop the judgement. Give time to the music, and not just say that it’s a bad piece of music.
We all think about experiencing music just through our ears, just like we are used to clap with our two hands. But it is also possible to create other sounds by clapping on other parts of our body or use just 2 fingers and so on.
In one of Evelyn`s first lessons, her teacher let her experimenting with the snare drum using her body instead of the sticks. By playing technical exercises, there has to be a reason to saying something through music. This is how you can reach the audience. How we listen to the music and how you feel. Allow your body to open up at the next concert. Be aware that you are not going to experiencing the same as the performer.
