He has woven rhythms out of rattling teeth and gulping digestive tracts; turned the cheep of a minute-old chicken into a funky bass line; and channeled the percussive crunch of 3,255 people biting into apples at once.
"The four men on stage were constantly on the move -- clacking wooden blocks, scratching a corrugated gourd, flailing away at Chinese gongs, weaving rhythms that were insistent, sinuous and hypnotic.
Nilas Martins's score is an artful weave of rhythms, musical styles and moods.
In fact, watching Glover build and orchestrate the complex weave of rhythms is like watching a mathematician set up an equation and factor it out.
Like many of his scores, this triptych, inspired by dreams and completed in 1985, weaves lively rhythms, vivid colors and elements of popular music into a tightly wrought canvas.
As the two soloists wove their rhythms around each other, it sounded like a conversation, and one wondered if percussion might be a universal language after all.Guinea's rich musical culture proved one of the festival's greatest assets.
"Weaving is about rhythm and making," he says.
He proceeded to weave these exciting rhythms into a great number (over 500) of studies he wrote for the princess when she settled eventually in Madrid.
Mayimbi, the violinist, told me, "Of course we have borrowed classical music from the Western cultures — but then what are we doing with it?" Mayimbi, who also composes for the orchestra, told me that when he listens to Beethoven he can hear a way to weave in Congolese rhythms.
As for our percussion, it's never just a drum machine or a sample, we put a lot of real live drumming or percussion in there, woven into the rhythm tracks, and it brings a bit of chaos into the sound that you just can't achieve any other way.
The song also has elements of piano and synthesizer woven into the rhythm of the song.
