GRAMMY-winning Dame Evelyn Glennie, the world’s premiere solo percussionist, stuns us once again with genre-mashing album with the Manitoba Chamber Orchestra

SPRING 2018 — Let’s get the superlatives out of the way.

GRAMMY-winner Dame Evelyn Glennie is one of the most prodigious percussionists working today. She is celebrated the world over, and boasts one of the most consistently surprising recording catalogues of any classically trained musician today. There’s her Celtic album with Mark Knopfler, her improvised lullabies and dirges with Björk, her tour de force drumming album, and her impeccable recording of classical masterworks.

Her latest album, Mirage? Concertos for Percussion, falls more or less into that last category. It’s a collaboration with the Juno-winning Manitoba Chamber Orchestra (“Canada’s tiny, perfect orchestra,” Toronto Star) and was recorded at CBC’s Glenn Gould Studio in Toronto. Even in the role of a classical musician, Glennie’s polymathic impulses can’t be contained. She trades in her drumsticks for mallets here, performing brilliantly on melodic percussion instruments, adding a jazz quality to an album that’s already unusually eclectic.

The album’s gorgeous titular piece Mirage? was composed for Glennie by beloved Canadian-Greek composer Christos Hatzis in 2008, when he was feeling particularly bleak about the world financial situation. At first, voluptuous, romantic themes drift pleasantly in and out focus, suggest- ing the extravagance of the roaring 20s. But not all is gold that glitters. A melancholic mood intrudes and the scene seems to turn to rust, as though crafted very fine counterpoint between orchestra and soloist here, giving us the sense of overhearing a profound intellectual debate that eventually finds an elegant resolution that washes serenely over the listener.

The album’s baroque offerings are special arrangements of Vivaldi’s Piccolo Concerto in C Major and Corelli’s Sonata in D Minor, with Glennie performing on vibraphone and marimba respectively. These unconventional arrangements would seem gimmicky if the resulting recordings weren’t such irresistible earworms.

Conducted by MCO Music Director Anne Manson (who is celebrating her tenth season as MCO Music Director and has worked with orchestras and opera companies around the world), Mirage? Concertos for Percussion is a perfect achievement for marking the MCO’s 45th anniversary, and is a must-have for fans of Evelyn Glennie. It features cover art by renowned Canadian artist Sarah Anne Johnson, and is now available at themco.ca.

★★★★½

La Scena Musicale

★★★★½

Winnipeg Free Press

Highly recommended

Vancouver Sun

Wonderful

Robert Rowat, CBC

Obsessive perfectionism … genius

Jazz Dagma

Glitters and gleams and sparkles … One more occasion to marvel at the profound auditory imagination of [Glennie]

Matthew Gurewitsch, Beyond Criticism

Beautifully performed

Chris Wolf, Classic 107

Stunning … exquisite

Percussive Notes (Percussion Arts Society)