Strength Beyond the Silence

On 11 August, Evelyn Glennie returns to the Royal Albert Hall for the BBC Proms, 37 years on from her debut in 1989. Two months later, on Thursday 8 October, she takes to the stage as a guest speaker at Leeds Playhouse for the Leeds International Festival of Ideas.

Hosting the Leeds event is Dr Hannah French, breakfast presenter on BBC Radio 3, who brings her own connection to the Proms. After completing her doctorate at the University of Leeds, Hannah wrote a book on Sir Henry Wood, one of the festival’s founding fathers, whose bust is carried each summer from the Royal Academy of Music across London to preside over the concert hall that has been synonymous with the Proms since the Second World War.

Connection is the thread here. In his memoir Everything Is Connected, the conductor, pianist and humanitarian Daniel Barenboim argues that nothing in music, or in life, stands alone. For this year’s Festival, that idea turns towards disability, and to the two things that quietly bind music together: silence and listening. Classical aficionados will think of John Cage’s 4’33”, the piece that made silence its subject. But for Evelyn and Hannah, the relationship between sound and silence runs far deeper than a single composition.

Evelyn lost her hearing as a child. Rather than ending her relationship with music, it reshaped it, she went on to become a solo percussionist and two-time Grammy winner, learning to let her whole body become an extension of the ear. Hannah lives with Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, a collagen disorder, and makes space for music while managing chronic pain. Both know what it means to create sound from a place most listeners never see.

Join us on Thursday 8 October to hear Evelyn and Hannah and perhaps a special guest as they share what it means to live with a hidden disability in an industry built on sound.

Further reading
Barenboim, Everything Is Connected: https://www.waterstones.com/book/everything-is-connected/daniel-barenboim/9780753825945 

French, Sir Henry Wood: Champion of J. S. Bach: https://www.waterstones.com/book/sir-henry-wood-champion-of-j-s-bach/hannah-french/9781783273850