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The 2003 documentary Rivers and Tides was a documentary that took its time finding an audience. But once it did, it ran in many cities for months. A profile of artist Andy Goldsworthy, the film was a gorgeous exploration not only of Goldsworthy's work but of the nature of art itself. It beautifully conveyed how he uses color and form to create spectacular outdoor installations. Even more importantly, the installations were designed to deteriorate and disappear over time, so the movie became a meditation on time and life itself. If you ever get a chance to see the movie, I heartily recommend it.

I also heartily recommend director Thomas Riedelsheimer's latest documentary, Touch the Sound, which opens this Friday the Music Box theater. It's another portrait of an artist, this time the percussionist Evelyn Glennie. She's an incredibly inventive and accomplished musician, as we see in several full numbers. But she's not playing in an orchestra. Instead, she mostly improvises with improvised materials, shaping anything around her into a sonic device. Sometimes that takes place in a huge abandoned factory that she's converted into a gorgeous echo chamber. At other times, it's at a school where she's working with kids. And sometimes it's just along the street where she's walking or in a restaurant where she's eating.

Glennie manipulates the sound in fascinating ways, and in so doing provokes us to consider the sounds in our lives and how much we take for granted. Just as Rivers and Tides made us think about the basics of color and visual form, Touch the Sound provokes us to hear the world in new ways: to notice the little sounds that lurk beneath the din of life, to sit still and listen to the ripples of a pond, or to be awed by the power of a rising gong. Glennie also has the exuberance of a child who first realizes the sound he can make by banging two pots together or the wild surprise of hearing his own voice in an echoing room. She can take a stick, pick up a solid object, and suddenly invent noises that you didn't think were possible.

Complementing all of this is Riedelsheimer's spectacular cinematography. Though he doesn't have Andy Goldsworthy's color palette from Rivers and Tides, he creates even more with abstract shapes, close-ups of Glennie's "instruments," and architectural and landscape shots that Antonioni would be proud of. In this way, Riedelsheimer becomes a perfect collaborator, highlighting the visual components to dovetail with the aural. There are numerous moments in the movie where I gasped out loud from the sheer beauty on display. The factory, which functions as a sound studio for collaborations with guitarist Fred Firth, becomes a place where Riedelsheimer can experiment with camera location and movement, while a dilapidated farm in Scotland provides a striking background. Riedelsheimer's amazing ability to capture the beauty in every-day surroundings is even more impressive than it was in Rivers and Tides, where part of the beauty was due to the visual art on display.

There is one more element to the film that I shouldn't overlook. Glennie is mostly deaf. As she describes at various points in the documentary, she's more touching or feeling the sound than hearing it (hence the title). This leads to some interesting philosophical discussions on the nature of sound and hearing, though I have to point out that she's more articulate with her instruments than she is with her philosophy. Which is maybe why Riedelsheimer doesn't focus much on Glennie's "disability." This has irritated some critics to the point of distraction, who feel that Glennie's deafness should function as the centerpiece of the film. I was more impressed that the documentary doesn't need to dwell on it (or patronize Glennie because of it) but instead treats her as an artist whose work is eminently worthy of respect and awe. And since much of the music and sound goes unrecorded, Touch the Sound is a sequel, in a way, to Rivers and Tides as Riedelsheimer explores the nature of art destined to quickly disappear.

All in all, this is an artistic triumph: accessible but never dumbed-down, inspiring and thought-provoking. It's not likely to be as big a hit as some of the last year's mega-documentaries but it's a thrilling, beautiful film that has had me pondering it ever since I saw it last year.  

J. Robert Parks