Evelyn Glennie had a major-label contract and a sojourn in the spotlight for a time, thanks in part to her novelty as a hearing-impaired percussionist, but her work since then, if not so widely publicized, is arguably even better than that on her best-sellers. Glennie has proven herself an able advocate of contemporary music, ready to deploy batteries of percussion in search of new sound frontiers. One could not ask for a better example than this release, containing a pair of works written for Glennie by Joan Tower; the ...
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Evelyn Glennie had a major-label contract and a sojourn in the spotlight for a time, thanks in part to her novelty as a hearing-impaired percussionist, but her work since then, if not so widely publicized, is arguably even better than that on her best-sellers. Glennie has proven herself an able advocate of contemporary music, ready to deploy batteries of percussion in search of new sound frontiers. One could not ask for a better example than this release, containing a pair of works written for Glennie by Joan Tower; the energies of these two creative musicians seem to run along similar tracks. The two works are complementary. The cleverly titled Strike Zones fills the stage with percussion and seems to grow outward in its scope, while Small, written in 2016 when Tower was close to 80, is for tabletop percussion. Strike Zones was premiered in 2001 by Glennie and the National Symphony Orchestra under Leonard Slatkin, but inexplicably, it has never been recorded until now. The Albany Symphony under David...
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