Evelyn Glennie Rolls....

And...we're back. It's been a busy two weeks over here at Four on the Floor between teaching at summer Jazz camps in both Alberta and Saskatchewan and peddling my limited edition, 10th anniversary Four on the Floor t-shirts (if you want one, you'd better hurry as they are almost gone!) In any event, regular blogging will now resume until I take my yearly break for the month of August.

Anyways, let's get the week off to a good start now and stop to appreciate this clip of acclaimed percussionist Dame Evelyn Glennie playing a closed/buzz/press roll for 30 interrupted minutes:



Now some might scoff at this but if you take the time to watch and really listen to this (like I did...) hopefully you'll come to appreciate not only the endurance needed to accomplish this task but also the musical intent and subtle nuances she is playing with. This takes not only a lot of stamina but a lot of musical concentration as well.

Ted Warren, over at his blog Trap'd, recently shared his thoughts on Dan Weiss' intensive practice regimen and I think Glennie's press roll marathon falls in line with that as well.

Personally, developing closed/buzz/press roll vocabulary has been a personal, on-going goal of mine for sometime so I find the above clip quite inspiring. In fact, I think it's beautiful.