Dame Evelynn Glennie says ‘I can’ for disability charity campaign Dame Evelynn Glennie says ‘I can’ for disability charity campaign “For me, listening is about more than hearing” Thursday 8 May Tweet - May 08 at 8:43 AM World renowned solo percussionist Dame Evelyn Glennie DBE has joined a number of celebrities, Paralympians and personalities helping to drive a new national campaign. Disability charity Papworth Trust is encouraging everyone to see people for what they can do with its I can campaign, launched yesterday. It features a new television advertisement, as well as posters on billboards and leaflets. Dame Evelyn, who lives in Cambridgeshire, features in the posters along with other inspirational figures fronting the campaign including Professor Stephen Hawking, quadruple amputee and mountaineer Jamie Andrew, and Paralympians Jonnie Peacock, Pam Relph, and Fran Williamson. “Achievement comes from listening. For me, listening is about more than hearing,” is the quote from Dame Evelyn which features on the poster. Dame Evelyn, who is profoundly deaf, has produced acclaimed work in the classical, pop, and avant-garde fields.

She performed at the Opening Ceremony of the London 2012 Olympics leading a 1,000-drummer ensemble performing in the Pandemonium segment of the Danny Boyle-directed show. Papworth Trust’s Director of Strategy and Marketing, David Martin said, “We are really proud that Dame Evelyn and so many inspirational people have joined us to spread the message of our I can campaign. Dame Evelyn is a great example of being seen for what she can do and is an inspiration to us all. “What drives us here at Papworth Trust is a passion to create a world where we are seen for what we can do, working together for equality, choice and independence. “We support more than 20,000 people, their families and carers every year. Our services have been created with the people we work with, to support them to live their lives to the full. We aim to achieve our vision by inspiring everyone to try to change our world and work together so that we can make a difference.” Please visit to find out more about Papworth Trust’s I can campaign and their essential services for disabled and older people.

Dame Evelyn Glennie, the deaf percussionist who listens with her whole body - The Globe and Mail The Globe and Mail Tuesday, Mar. 01, 2011 4:40PM EST Last updated Print License article "The first performance is almost like passing your driving test," Dame Evelyn Glennie says in a soft Scottish brogue. "It doesn't make you into an expert Formula 1 driver." Glennie's astonishing abilities as a percussionist may be equivalent to those of a racer at Le Mans, but you probably get her point. No actor would say that he had got the whole measure of Hamlet after performing the part just once. Glennie has given the premieres of many new pieces, including Vincent Ho's percussion concerto The Shaman, which the Winnipeg-based composer wrote for her late last year. It opened the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra's 20th annual New Music Festival in January, and was voted audience favourite. Don't expect to hear quite the same piece when Glennie opens the Toronto Symphony Orchestra's New Creations Festival Wednesday, even though the music on her stand will again be Ho's concerto.

Unlike Hamlet, The Shaman includes sections in which it's up to the soloist to decide what to play and on which instruments. "This is the orchestra, and this is me," Glennie says, pointing to the notes for orchestra on the score's first page, and then to an adjacent space marked "cadenza." She gets three of those in the opening minutes, though she insists that everyone in Roy Thomson Hall will have an influence over what she plays. "The audience plays a huge part in how a piece will actually form," she says. "They really allow the performers to walk a tightrope in a way that never seems to happen in the privacy of your own four walls. I'm listening to the audience, and they're listening to me. "The listening skills in Winnipeg were fantastic, and that really allowed the stretching of phrasing, allowed a kind of danger, when you're pushing and pushing things, that only happens in a live situation. It's not the nerves that are doing that, it's the audience" Glennie may be one of the best listeners in the world, because she has had to develop the listening abilities of her entire body.

Since the age of 12, she has been profoundly deaf, which means her ears deliver only a fraction of the sound vibrations that she picks up most vividly through her feet, hands, chest and whatever else in her frame responds to the vibrations from her various instruments. "The body's like a huge ear," she says. "It's as simple as that." Her sensitivity to sound seems magical when you hear her play. Magic was on Ho's mind after he met Glennie, began corresponding with her by e-mail, and gradually developed with her a plan for a concerto related to special talents, old and new. "For years I've been fascinated with indigenous cultures, and the music of indigenous cultures, which often play a huge role in shamanism," he says. "Music was always an important element in their rituals. I wanted to create a piece that showcased Evelyn as a modern-day shaman. Every time I hear her perform, I feel I'm transported beyond material existence." The Shaman is a big, colourful work in four movements, with lots of range for virtuoso fireworks, as well as for more lyrical music on mallet instruments.

As you might expect from any piece written for percussion, it's strongly rhythmic, and (to judge from a tape of the Winnipeg performance) highly varied in the types of sounds selected by the soloist. Glennie made her choices with an eye to practicality, however. She used to travel with her own gear, but with the straitened economies of concert life, she now more often depends on whatever is available at or near the venue. She stayed away from outré things, and looked for ways of using familiar instruments in new ways, such as allowing the body of a tympanum to act as a resonator for smaller instruments. She's been trying out other sound sources during rehearsals this week, including the most portable of all: her own voice. The goal is to make it easy for Ho's concerto to travel and have more performances. "This piece has a very long shelf-life," Glennie says. Coming from someone who plays a lot of contemporary music, much of it written for her by leading composers, that remark is at least as good a compliment as an audience seal of approval. Dame Evelyn Glennie and the TSO perform The Shaman Wednesday night at Roy Thomson Hall.

The TSO's New Creations Festival continues with two more concerts on March 5, featuring a co-commissioned piece by John Adams; and March 10, featuring eighth blackbird and the premiere of R. Murray Schafer's Symphony No. 1. Evelyn Glennie | Biography & History | AllMusic google+ Artist Biography by Rovi Staff Evelyn Glennie , born in Aberdeen, Scotland, in 1965, is the world's foremost, and first full-time, solo percussionist. The recipient of enormous media attention due to her deafness, Glennie is likewise noteworthy for the variety of her repertoire and recording projects. She lost her hearing at the age of 12 and began to study timpani at that time, working extensively with her teacher to learn to sense percussion vibrations. Glennie studied percussion and timpani, though she also studied piano as a secondary focus from 1982, when she enrolled at the Royal Academy of Music in London. Glennie became the first student ever to give a percussion recital or perform a percussion concerto at the RAM. Glennie made her professional debut in 1985, and it did not take long for her musical adventurousness to show itself.

In addition to performing with classical ensembles, she commissioned new works (more than 130 works by 2008), single-handedly expanding the repertoire of works for solo percussion. Glennie has had many works written for her by major composers, including James MacMillan (the percussion concerto Veni, veni Emmanuel), Michael Daugherty (UFO), Yi Chen (Percussion Concerto), Thea Musgrave (Journey Through a Japanese Landscape), and many others. Among her recordings is the 2006 Naxos CD of Aurolucent Circles (Concerto for Percussion and Orchestra) and other works by Margaret Brouwer. An energetic concertizer, she is typically on the road for over 100 evenings a year, and has made several dozen recordings. Glennie crosses musical boundaries with unusual ease. In addition to performances with most of the major European and American classical orchestras, she has worked with the Kodo Japanese drummers, the experimental Icelandic pop vocalist Björk , Javanese gamelan ensembles, Brazilian samba bands, and other musicians on five continents.

Her album Shadow Behind the Iron Sun, released in 2000, fulfilled Glennie 's long-held desire to join forces with a pop producer, in this case the veteran American studio wizard Michael Brauer. The disc showcased the large collection of percussion instruments Glennie has mastered (she has well over 1,300 instruments in her personal collection), including homemade instruments, most notably a set of cut and tuned car exhaust pipes, as well as sounds from around the world. A composer herself, Glennie has written music for film and television in collaboration with the composer and web designer Greg Malcangi . She also plays the Great Highland bagpipes. Her numerous awards include "Scotswoman of the Decade," a Grammy award for her 1989 recording of Bartók's Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion, and her designation as Officer of the British Empire at the age of 27, an honor very rarely given to anyone under 50. She was upgraded in 2007 to Dame Commander (DBE). Glennie does not mention her deafness in press materials, and she has been known to react with exasperation when asked about it to the exclusion of musical matters.

She is profoundly deaf, meaning that while she cannot understand speech, she can hear some sound. What she hears is augmented, as it is for everyone else, by her sense of touch. The sensation of feeling vibrations is experienced by Glennie at various frequencies and in various parts of her body. She tends to feel low sounds in her legs and feet, and high ones on her face, neck, and chest. Glennie contends that hearing is a form of touch, and that everyone, whether "deaf" or not, processes sound in an individual way. Glennie 's autobiography, Good Vibrations, appeared in 1990. Profoundly deaf percussionist Dame Evelyn Glennie honoured with Polar Music Prize | Anglia - ITV News 10 March 2015 at 4:55pm Profoundly deaf percussionist Dame Evelyn Glennie honoured with Polar Music Prize Dame Evelyn Glennie is made a Dame in 2008. Photo: PA Virtuoso percussionist Dame Evelyn Glennie has been awarded the prestigious Polar Music Prize. She shares this year’s accolade with country music star Emmylou Harris. They will receive their awards at a ceremony in Stockholm in June.

Dame Evelyn will receive her award in June. Credit: PA Dame Evelyn was the first performer to create a full-time career as a solo percussionist. After becoming profoundly deaf when she was 12-years-old she discovered that she could feel the vibrations of sounds. 12 The age that Dame Evelyn Glennie became profoundly deaf. Speaking from her studio in Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire , she said that the entire body could function like an ear. “I had to find another way to experience music. Deep inside of me I really felt that I wanted to participate but I had to find a way to do it without being reliant on the ears." – Dame Evelyn Glennie Evelyn has played with orchestras all over the world and has won three Grammys for music she has composed. She performed at the opening ceremony of the London 2012 Olympics. “What does a musician do? They create sound. That means you are not being a hostage to whether that piece is classical, or jazz, or folk, or Latin. Music is an experience because each person will experience it quite differently.

So you can perform a very contemporary piece to five-year-olds and they may say that sounds like their dad's lawn mower and it's wonderful, it really does." – Dame Evelyn Glennie Evelyn performed at the opening ceremony of the London 2012 Olympics. Credit: PA The Polar Music Prize is an international award which recognises musicians from a variety of genres. Previous British winners include Sir Paul McCartney, Sir Elton John, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd and Peter Gabriel. Sir Paul McCartney is a past winner of The Polar Music Prize. Credit: PA "The fact that I'm able to collaborate with many different types of musicians has been one of the exciting things in my journey. As soon as we're born we're striking something or rattling something. There are no social barriers to percussion at all." – Dame Evelyn Glennie Evelyn’s award recognises her mission in music. As a deaf performer she says she wants to Teach the World to Listen.

Last updated Tue 10 Mar 2015 Dame Evelyn Glennie and Emmylou Harris win Polar Music Prize - BBC News BBC News Dame Evelyn Glennie and Emmylou Harris win Polar Music Prize 10 March 2015 Image copyright Handout Image caption Organisers said Dame Evelyn Glennie (left) and Emmylou Harris are "richly deserving" winners Scottish virtuoso percussionist Dame Evelyn Glennie and US country singer Emmylou Harris have been named 2015 Laureates of the Polar Music Prize. They will receive their awards from Sweden's King Carl XVI at a ceremony in Stockholm on 9 June. Dame Evelyn - who has been profoundly deaf since the age of 12 - said she was "humbled and inspired" to be awarded music's version of the Nobel Prize. Harris, a 13-time Grammy winner, said she was "surprised and honoured". Dame Evelyn, who played at the opening of the London 2012 Olympics, was the first person in history to have a full-time career as a solo percussionist.

"This award is so interesting, because it is recognising many different musicians from different musical backgrounds," she told the BBC's Colin Paterson in an interview for Radio 4's Today programme . Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Dame Evelyn performed at the opening ceremony of the London 2012 Olympics The musician, who turns 50 this year, made her career possible by encouraging composers to make pieces for her. "The commissioning aspect, obviously that has been the most important part of my career," she told the BBC at her studio in Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire. "When I started there was just simply too little repertoire to sustain a career." 'Exceptional careers' Since the Polar Music Prize was founded by Abba manager and lyricist Stig Anderson in 1992, it has honoured musical achievements and boundary breaking. Each year it recognises one laureate from the contemporary music world and one from the more classical realm. Organisers called 2015's Laureates "richly deserving" winners with "exceptional music careers". "Both represent the spirit of the award that my father envisaged when he founded the prize," said managing director Marie Ledin.

Image copyright Jack Spencer Image caption Emmylou Harris has won 13 Grammys, the most recent last year Harris, from Birmingham, Alabama, has recorded more than 25 albums over four decades and was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2008. She has collaborated with artists from Bob Dylan and Gram Parsons to Willie Nelson and Beck and is the subject of the 2012 song Emmylou by Swedish folk duo First Aid Kit. "I was both surprised and honoured at the news of this most prestigious award," said Harris, 67. She told organisers she was "now looking forward to once again returning to your beautiful country where I was first so warmly welcomed... many years ago." 'Sound is vibration' Dame Evelyn has released more than 30 solo albums, has won three Grammys and has played with the world's most prestigious orchestras. "To be chosen from so many deserving people, from all genres of music, only makes me want to work harder, to make a difference and to rise to the occasion," she said.

Organisers said she "shows us that the body is a resonance chamber and that we live in a universe of sound." "There's no such thing as total deafness," Dame Evelyn told the BBC. "If the body can feel, that is a form of hearing. Sound is vibration, that's what it is." Previous winners of the Polar Music Prize include Sir Paul McCartney, Chuck Berry, Patti Smith and Youssou N'Dour. As well as their trophy, Harris and Dame Evelyn will each be awarded 1 million Swedish krona (£78,560). Dame Evelyn Glennie Evelyn Glennie By Lauren Vogel Weiss “It’s important to grab on to any opportunity that comes your way, but you also need to practice the art of creating your own opportunities.” Evelyn Glennie is a percussionist of many firsts: first full-time solo percussionist in the world; first to perform a percussion concerto at London’s Royal Academy of Music; first to give a percussion recital and concerto performance at BBC’s Henry Wood Promenade Concerts (“Proms”); first percussionist to be awarded the Dame Commander of the British Empire (DBE); and the youngest person ever to be elected to the PAS Hall of Fame.

So instead of looking back on the career of Evelyn Glennie, we can only review her life and accomplishments thus far. Many more decades of music lie ahead for this energetic Scotswoman. On June 25, 2008, Dame Evelyn met Queen Elizabeth II to officially accept the honor that had been bestowed upon her the year before. Evelyn was also distinguished with the title Officer of the British Empire (OBE) for her service to music in 1993, at the tender age of 27. “I’m fairly young to receive either of these honors,” Evelyn humbly explains, “but I’m delighted to accept them. There hasn’t been a knighthood given to a percussionist before, let alone a solo percussionist. We are still figuring out the best way to use this title, but it will obviously help us with the charitable, educational, and corporate work that we do.” From Dame to PAS Hall of Fame—how does it feel to be given this percussive honor? “It was a delightful surprise!” Evelyn smiles.

“PAS gave me a lot of inspiration in my early years.” She first attended PASIC ’85 in Los Angeles, accompanying her mentor James Blades (who had been inducted into the PAS Hall of Fame a decade earlier). “That experience was incredible! The hugeness of it all, meeting new people, and being in a different country, as well as a different climate; the whole package is something I won’t ever forget. James Blades was the person who introduced me to PAS, which was a priceless gift.” Evelyn Glennie has performed clinics, concerts, and master classes at six PASICs (1985, 1987, 1989—which included her North American debut with the Nashville Symphony Orchestra—1991, 1994, and 1999), and attended others as “just another PAS member.” She served on the PAS Board of Directors (1994–99), and in 1994 she spoke at the Hall of Fame banquet in Atlanta and will do so again in Austin, this time as one of the honorees.

“It’s important to take a moment to pause and reflect about what has been done in the past, where one is now, and where you want to be in the future,” says Evelyn. “It’s a personal time to reflect on the impact you might have on other people as well. I don’t know if age plays a part in it, because I feel as though I haven’t really achieved very much and there’s still so much to do! I’m looking forward to the next 20-odd years.” Evelyn was named Scotswoman of the Decade in 1990 and Musical America’s Instrumentalist of the Year in 2003, to name a few of the 80-plus awards she has to her credit. She has received over 20 honorary doctorates from universities around the world, and in 2006 she was recognized with Sabian’s Lifetime Achievement Award. Evelyn Elizabeth Ann Glennie was born on July 19, 1965 in Aberdeen, Scotland, the youngest of three children and only daughter of farming parents. She began studying piano at age eight and two years later began to play clarinet.

As her hearing began to deteriorate (Evelyn is profoundly deaf), she switched to percussion at age 12. The percussion teacher at her secondary school, Ellon Academy, decided to give Evelyn a chance. “Ron Forbes was a sensitive person and he had a great deal of patience with me,” she told Modern Drummer in a 1989 interview. While she was trying to tune timpani, he suggested she put her hands flat on the wall to feel the vibrations the tuned interval created. “I could feel the vibrations in my hands and lower parts of my legs, so I got the pitch that way. I can also put my fingertips on the edge and feel it that way. There are countless ways of really hearing a particular instrument.” Evelyn adds that, over the years, “I have developed this technique to an immense degree.” Thanks to her perfect pitch and the fact that she performs barefoot (or in stocking feet), Evelyn “hears” the vibrations through her body. Together with her deft lip-reading skills, lilting Scottish accent, and amazing musicianship, she has conquered any preconceived notions of her impairment.

It is also important to note that Evelyn does not consider herself a “deaf musician” (nor is the fact included in her concert programs) but rather a musician with a hearing impairment. (For more details on her views on hearing disabilities and how deafness has affected her, visit her Website, .) The New York Times has called Glennie “a musician, pure and simple” and stated that “her musicianship is extraordinary. One has to pause in sheer wonder at what she has accomplished. She is quite simply a phenomenon of a performer.” At age 16, Evelyn auditioned for and was accepted by both the Royal Academy of Music and the Royal College of Music. She chose the Academy (RAM) and moved to London. There she studied with Nicholas Cole, Principal Percussionist with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, and met James Blades. He encouraged her to explore new areas of percussion. In 1986, she traveled to Japan to study with Keiko Abe for a month. In 1984, during her second year at the Academy, Evelyn entered a national percussion competition and won the Gold Medal in the Shell/London Symphony Orchestra Music Scholarship.

She also received the James Blades Prize twice—one year for timpani and the following year for percussion—as well as the Queen’s Commendation Prize for all-around excellence, both musically and academically. And just before graduation in the spring of 1985, at the age of 19, she performed “Concerto Palindromos” by Kenneth Dempster—the first percussion concerto performed at the Academy and her first commission. During this time, Evelyn was also the subject of a BBC documentary, A Will To Win, and a Yorkshire TV documentary, Good Vibrations (also the title of her 1990 autobiography). The following year brought another documentary, The Glennie Determination by Radio 4, along with expanded national and international publicity. In 1987, Glennie was invited to join Sir George Solti, Murray Perahia, and timpanist David Corkhill for a tour featuring Bartók’s “Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion.” The piece was recorded by CBS Records and won a Grammy Award in 1989.

She also appeared on Béla Fleck’s Perpetual Motion, which won the Grammy for Best Classical Crossover Album in 2001, and she has received two other Grammy nominations as well. She performed a Promenade recital at Kensington Town Hall in July 1989, the first percussion recital for that esteemed musical event, and later that year she recorded and released her first solo album, Rhythm Song. Evelyn was well on her way to earning her living as a solo percussionist. Nearly two decades later, Evelyn has two dozen recordings to her credit, the most recent being The Sugar Factory with [guitarist] Fred Frith, taken from the film Touch the Sound. Evelyn describes the art-house film as “the explanation of sound.” The film is a sensory journey showcasing Evelyn performing in a variety of locations around the world. “It’s a hugely important tool. We just need to take our time to listen to the sounds around us. Listening is about being attentive and paying attention.” She has performed in over 40 countries on five continents, often giving more than 100 concerts a year.

This year has been relatively calm with just six-dozen performances plus numerous speeches and other non-performing events. Evelyn has concertized with almost 200 different ensembles (not counting repeat visits to particular venues), including all the top-tier orchestras around the world. She used to travel with literally tons of equipment but now makes arrangements to have the instruments provided for her at each venue. Having spent years traveling with a full-time percussion tech, she is now assisted at different points along the way, usually to set up a new concerto receiving its first performance. This past spring Evelyn added two new works to her repertoire of 120 concertos (56 of them written especially for her): “Conjurer” by John Corigliano and “Tongues of Fire” by Christos Hatzis (written for both Glennie and Hatzis’s wife, Canadian percussionist Beverly Johnston). “Conjurer” was co-commissioned by the Pittsburgh Symphony (where it received its world premiere on February 21, 2008), Nashville Symphony, Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Gulbelkian Orchestra (Lisbon, Portugal), Dallas Symphony, and the National Arts Orchestra (Quebec, Canada).

Originally called “Triple Play” for its three movements featuring wood, metal, and skin instruments, the title evolved into “Conjurer” after the first performance. “The conjurer is the soloist,” explained Corigliano during a backstage interview in Dallas, “and the pieces of wood, metal, and skin are objects that she brings to life through hitting, stroking, or bowing. They become magical.” “I asked John to write a concerto back in 1999,” Glennie recalls, “and it took nearly ten years for this project to happen. We worked closely together through e-mail, and he flew to the UK to be in the studio with me before the first performance. He was also at all the rehearsals and performances we did in Pittsburgh and Nashville. That was invaluable. “It’s been a really good collaboration,” she says with a smile, and adds, “I’ve thoroughly enjoyed this particular commission!” Three weeks after her performance of the Corigliano concerto in Dallas on May 4, Evelyn played “Tongues of Fire” by Hatzis with the Vancouver (British Columbia) Symphony Orchestra, followed by concerts in Calgary (Alberta) the next week.

“This is a very different piece of music,” she explains. Written for full orchestra, including percussion—the Corigliano is for strings only—it includes a recorded pop song, “Eternity’s Heartbeat,” in the same-named second movement as well as an improvisation between the soloist and concertmaster in the third movement. “It’s a completely different type of musical language,” elaborates Evelyn. “It’s allowed me to experience some techniques that I don’t use very often, such as the bending of notes on vibraphone, which is very effective in the slow movement.” Since the piece was premiered by Beverly Johnston last year at the Scotia Festival of Music, Evelyn was able to bounce some ideas off another soloist. “Normally you don’t have that opportunity. I went through the piece and decided what the setup should be for my particular needs, and then had a chance to compare that setup with Bev. I have to travel with a piece, so I need to play the piece without duplicating instruments, otherwise it is more weight and expense. That was probably one of the main differences between our setups. But I still went through the piece as though it were the very first time it was performed.

No matter how old the piece may be, if it’s the first time for me to perform a piece of music, then I have to view that work as a new composition.” In addition to being a performer, Evelyn is also a composer in her own right. “But I’m not a composer with a capital C,” she says with a smile. “I write music for television, radio, and media purposes, which is a very different type of writing than for the concert platform. This allows me to use some of the unusual instruments in my collection [1,800 and counting!] that I may not necessarily travel with. It’s also a chance to collaborate with other people who might be more involved with the electronic side of things. But I think composing is a very valuable thing to do, and it really allows you to delve into sound and connect sound to imagery.” Branching out from music, Dame Evelyn is also a popular motivational speaker. The day before her Damehood investiture ceremony, she was in New York City as one of the keynote speakers at the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC) 2008 International Conference. “I talked to them about how to listen,” she elaborates.

“My whole profession as a musician is about listening and what it entails. I explained how I use listening as a professional musician and how they can use it within their work environment.” Another speech at the beginning of July was for the National Health Service in London and centered around her film, Touch the Sound. “We showed excerpts from the film and I spoke about the importance of sound,” Evelyn says. ”I try to let people know that it’s all around us; you have to pay attention and focus to digest that sound.” She recently spoke for Cambridgeshire Culture about the importance of music and the arts in education. The “empire” of Evelyn Glennie also includes a new line of jewelry, available through her Website. Performer, composer, motivational speaker, jewelry designer—and teacher. Evelyn has recently begun to take on a few students. “These are not just percussion students,” she emphasizes. “These are people who contact me for a specific reason. For example, somebody wants to know about the music business, or about agents and record companies. Another person is preparing for a competition or audition and he or she is working on certain pieces of music, so that would be a specific lesson.

Others may simply want me to observe their repertoire.” Her fees vary depending on the topics and the number of lessons required. Does she have advice for young percussionists? “It’s important to grab on to any opportunity that comes your way,” Evelyn states emphatically, “but you also need to practice the art of creating your own opportunities. Do not get used to waiting for things to happen; the sooner that lesson is learned, the better. You’re taking responsibility for your own actions, your own journey, and as a result of that, it’s so much more rewarding and the experience gained is far richer. “People told me, ‘You cannot be a solo percussionist’,” she recalls. “What would I play? Thanks to my journey over the last 20 years, there is now a body of repertoire to not only start a career more quickly but to sustain one. But that all stems from people saying, ‘No, it can’t happen.’ Once you believe in something, you know it’s absolutely possible to do.” Evelyn pauses before adding, “We can’t take for granted what we have, or what has been achieved. Things are moving so quickly in this business; it’s completely different than when I started.

Every day is an opportunity to take a good look at what you’re doing. You can practice all you want to achieve a high level of playing, but if you let a month go by, it’s almost like you’ve lost five years. Every time we pick up our sticks we have to be better than the previous time we picked them up.” What does Evelyn consider her greatest accomplishments so far? “The fact that a full-time solo percussionist did not exist before,” she modestly replies. “I don’t mean that in an egotistical way, but I was the first percussion concerto performer and recital soloist in the 100-plus year history of the Royal Academy of Music in London, and at the Prom concerts, too. These were high-profile performances that changed the perception of how people felt towards percussion. Every time you have an opportunity to perform, you’re planting the seed in someone else’s system. You’ve got to respect that and therefore give your best.” Dame Evelyn has certainly given her best to percussion and music around the world. “It’s important for people to think that I listened to my own voice and had a really good go at what I believed in,” she says.

“At the end of the day, there are absolutely countless individuals who play these instruments superbly well, but that just isn’t enough. There has to be that something extra there that really does make the difference. And that particular ‘something’ cannot be described with words.” Contact Us: Evelyn Glennie - Speaker available with Speaker Ideas, Musician . Written by Eithne Jones . Posted in Speakers Evelyn Glennie is one of the most eclectic and innovative musicians on the scene today. A unique, riveting, informal and humorous speaker who wows her audiences with her accomplished style and talent as the world’s first Solo Percussionist. She draws on her amazing wealth of experiences (her profound deafness has been more of a hindrance to others than to her) using her skills as a musician and sound creator. Dame Evelyn Glennie is constantly redefining the goals and expectations of percussion. The Grammy-winning percussionist and composer became almost completely deaf by the age of 12, but her hearing loss brought her a deeper understanding of and connection to the music she loves. By combining superb technique, a profound appreciation of the visual and her astonishing musicality, Evelyn creates performances of such vitality that they almost constitute a new type of performance.

Evelyn is profoundly deaf, and she doesn’t feel the need to make a big deal about it. After she lost her hearing when she was young, Evelyn spent a lot of time with her percussion teacher Ron Forbes, refining her ability to detect vibration. She can distinguish the rough pitch of notes by associating where on her body she feels the sound. Truth be told, Evelyn’s hearing is something that bothers other people far more than it bothers her. Since she is one of the world’s top international musicians, it must not make much of a difference to the orchestras, conductors, or venues. Now also in demand as a keynote speaker Evelyn draws on her amazing wealth of experiences as an international performer using her skills as a musician and sound creator. Evelyn speaks passionately about subjects including education, business and of course music. Her speaking engagements are defined as a “dialogue with a difference” using the medium of music to demonstrate and enhance the importance of our listening skills amongst the cacophony of modern day sounds.

With her unique perspective and outlook, an attitude to her ongoing and diverse career that doesn’t accept “no” to be an answer and a proven track record in educational and disability issues, Evelyn is as compelling a motivational speaker as she has proved to be a musician. Evelyn has worked on a number of the ‘Trial and Retribution’ (Linda La Plante) Productions, collaborated with diverse composers such as DJ MJ Cole (Matt Cole), David Motion, Ray Davies from the Kinks, Steve Hackett and has worked with Fred Frith to provide the sound track to “Touch the Sound” – a film featuring Evelyn on the nature of sound. Other projects have included composing the music for the car manufacturer Mazda, which was subsequently paraphrased by comedians due to its unusualness. She has composed songs with the vocalist Bjork and created a totally improvised solo percussion CD Shadow Behind the Iron Sun in collaboration with the producer/mixer Michael Brauer. This then led to totally improvised live shows, not to mention compositions for solo marimba, a huge list of arrangements and transcriptions for percussion and a couple of educational books for classroom use called “Beat it!”.

Her career has taken her to hundreds of concert stages around the world, and she’s recorded a dozen albums, winning a Grammy for her recording of Bartók’s Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion, and another for her 2002 collaboration with Bela Fleck. Evelyn’s twelfth solo CD, Shadow Behind the Iron Sun (BMG Records) was based on a radical concept and has once again questioned people’s expectations. Despite working a relentless schedule Evelyn is in constant demand to release new recordings, nineteen so far, the three most recent being ‘The Music of Christopher Rouse’ (ONDINE), ‘Oriental Landscapes’ (BIS) and ‘Fractured Lines’ by Mark-Anthony Turnage (CHANDOS). Her passion for music and musical literacy brought her to establish, in collaboration with fellow musicians Julian Lloyd Weber and Sir James Galway, the Music Education Consortium, which successfully lobbied for an investment of 332 million pounds in music education and musical resources in Britain.

The fact that Evelyn has performed with virtually all of the world’s finest orchestras and greatest conductors in the most famous concert halls only proves that Evelyn is one of the world’s top international concert soloists and the most in demand solo percussionist in the world. Outside of actual performance Evelyn excels in everything to which she turns her hand. She has written a bestselling autobiography, Good Vibrations and hosted two series of her own television programs for the BBC. She has composed and recorded music for film and television. Her first high quality drama produced a score so original she was nominated for a British Academy of Film and Television Arts awards (BAFTA’s); the UK equivalent of the Oscars. Testimonial Evelyn Glennie biography, birth date, birth place and pictures Email Print Evelyn Elizabeth Ann Glennie is a Scottish virtuoso percussionist. She was the first full-time solo percussionist in 20th-century western society. The master of more than 1,000 traditional and unconventional percussion instruments from around the world has performed with a range of musical talents, from the Kodo Japanese drummers to Icelandic pop singer Björk, and with every major orchestra in America and Europe.

Profoundly deaf (meaning severely impaired but not completely deaf) since the age of 12, the percussionist identifies notes by vibrations she feels through her feet and body; she insists her deafness is irrelevant to her ground-breaking, critically acclaimed work. Evelyn Elizabeth Ann Glennie was born July 19, 1965, the only daughter of Isobel, a school teacher, and Herbert Arthur Glennie, a beef farmer. Raised outside Aberdeen, Scotland, Glennie and her two brothers helped on the family farm and, though her mother was an organist, didn't grow up in a particularly musical environment. She was a promising student of piano and clarinet as a child, and she was blessed with perfect pitch, the ability to identify or sing a note by ear. At age eight, Glennie started complaining of sore ears and hearing loss. Her condition steadily deteriorated, and by age 11 she needed a hearing aid, which she found distracting and later discarded. She continued to play music and found she could perceive the quality of a note by the level of the reverberations she could feel in her hands, wrists, lower body, and feet.

Glennie counts as her major influences cellist Jacqueline du Pré and pianist Glenn Gould. When she was 12, Glennie saw a schoolmate playing percussion. She started taking lessons, and, she told People, "... it felt right." She graduated with honors from London's prestigious Royal Academy of Music in 1985. She claims her deafness kept her from being caught up by social distractions and made her a better student, but she also realized it affected her ability to play in an orchestra, so she set her sights on becoming a soloist. In 1985 she made her professional debut; the following year she left for Japan to study the five-octave marimba for a year. Glennie's first decade as a professional solo performer was filled with milestones: first performance of a new percussion concerto, first time an orchestra had performed with a solo percussionist, first solo percussion performance at a festival or venue. In 1990 she met Greg Malcagni, a recording engineer, and the two wed four years later.

Glennie introduced her rendition of fellow Scot James MacMillan's Veni, Veni, Emmanual--described by Billboard as "a devoutly celestial concerto"--at London's Royal Albert Hall in 1992. She released a recording of the work the following year. In 1996 Glennie released Drumming, which she described to Billboard as "quite a personal album." She wanted to make a "raw, ... improvised" album using untuned percussion. Billboard critic Timothy White called her playing on the record "breathtakingly instinctive." Glennie's twelfth solo release, Shadow Behind the Iron Sun,was released in 2000 and recorded under unusual circumstances. She and veteran pop producer Michael Brauer spent four days in a studio packed with every instrument Glennie played, exploring as many moods as possible, from dark and aggressive to light and happy. The improvised songs, which were all recorded on the first take, were titled after chapters in Eaters of the Dead,a Michael Crichton novel that Brauer was reading at the time.

"With this project, there were no boundaries, no rules, no limits," Glennie was quoted as saying on her website, adding it was her favorite record so far. African Sunrise/Manhattan Rave, released in 2001 on Black Box Records, is a work by British composer David Heath that Glennie and the London Philharmonic Orchestra bring to life. On "Manhattan Rave," Glennie literally plays on trash (an assortment of sticks, oilcans, and bottles and pans) and "does her best percussion freakout. It truly is an amazing work, capable of raising the dead while remaining somehow 'accessible,'" according to All Music Guide's Thom Jurek. While countless pieces of music have been composed for the piano, violin, flute, or cello, few works have been written for percussion. In an effort to change that, Glennie has commissioned more than 80 new pieces to date, with projects constantly in the works. She actively pursues new composers and commissions more new pieces, on average, than any other solo performer. Glennie has collected more than 1,000 percussion instruments, and there seems to be no end to what she is able to make music with.

She is a master of common percussion instruments from around the world--marimba, xylophone, timpani, chimes, congas, steel pan, djembes, bodhrans, daiko drums, and many more. But she is also wildly inventive. She creates instruments herself, like an adapted car muffler she strikes with triangle beaters. She also has made music on common items such as a hospital bed, camera, wheel hub, garbage can lid, flower pot, and starting gun. Composer Django Bates wrote a piece for Glennie, which she played only with kitchen utensils, called "My Dream Kitchen." She designed a line of cymbals for cymbal company Sabian called "Glennie's Garbage" that are welded from sheet metal. Glennie, who played clarinet as a child, also began to add wind instruments to her repertoire, starting with Great Highland bagpipes. Glennie tours extensively and exhaustively. She plays more than 100 concerts each year and has appeared across five continents.

She plays on 20 to 50 instruments during each performance, "bounding," as Michael Walsch wrote in Time, "from instrument to instrument with the grace of a natural athlete." A Washington Post critic was almost as impressed by Glennie's physical show in concert--which he called the "Evelyn Glennie Workout"--as he was by "the subtle gradations of sound and color she brings to every phrase." In addition to the details of her music and instruments, Glennie pays attention to the non-musical details of her shows, performing in colorful, theatrical costumes and with thematically designed sets and lights. Because she feels the music through her feet, she prefers to play barefoot. In addition to about two tons of equipment, Glennie travels with her Gameboy video game player. In addition to performing, Glennie and her husband have composed award-winning music for British film and television. She also hosted two series of her own television programs for the BBC, including one called Soundbites, which featured interviews and performances by musical guests. She has written two books for the marimba and a music education book for schools. Her best-selling autobiography, Good Vibrations, was published in 1985.

Glennie believes that her hearing impairment has no bearing on her position as a world-renowned percussionist, and she is reluctant to discuss the subject with interviewers. Although she is active in some 40 organizations for the deaf, such as a program that provides music-based therapy for hearing-impaired children, Glennie downplays her involvement, preferring to concentrate on elevating the art of percussion. She has achieved her goal, according to Symphony magazine: "Glennie is the one individual most responsible for the sudden emergence of percussion from the rear of the orchestra to front-and-center stage, both in fact and in public attention." Selected discography: -Rhythm Song , RCA Victor, 1990. -Light in Darkness , RCA Red Seal, 1991. -Dancin' , RCA Victor/BMG Classics, 1991. -Rebounds: Concertos for Percussion , RCA Red Seal, 1993. -MacMillan: Veni, Veni, Emmanual , Catalyst, 1993. -Wind in the Bamboo Grove , Catalyst, 1995. -Drumming , Catalyst, 1996.

-The Music of Joseph Schwantner , RCA Red Seal, 1997. -Her Greatest Hits , RCA Victor, 1998. -Street Songs , RCA Red Seal, 1998. -Reflected in Brass , RCA Red Seal, 1998. -Shadow Behind the Iron Sun , RCA Red Seal, 2000. -African Sunrise/Manhattan Rave , Black Box, 2001. Hearing Essay, Dame Evelyn Glennie Up: Introduction to the essays , previous: Practice Makes Perfect , next: Critical Review: Understanding Deaf Culture Hearing Essay Music represents life. A particular piece of music may describe a real, fictional or abstract scene from almost any area of human experience or imagination. It is the musicians job to paint a picture which communicates to the audience the scene the composer is trying to describe. I hope that the audience will be stimulated by what I have to say (through the language of music) and will therefore leave the concert hall feeling entertained. If the audience is instead only wondering how a deaf musician can play percussion then I have failed as a musician.

For this reason my deafness is not mentioned in any of the information supplied by my office to the press or concert promoters. Unfortunately, my deafness makes good headlines. I have learnt from childhood that if I refuse to discuss my deafness with the media they will just make it up. The several hundred articles and reviews written about me every year add up to a total of many thousands, only a handful accurately describe my hearing impairment. More than 90% are so inaccurate that it would seem impossible that I could be a musician. This web page is designed to set the record straight and allow people to enjoy the experience of being entertained by an ever evolving musician rather than some freak or miracle of nature. Deafness is poorly understood in general. For instance, there is a common misconception that deaf people live in a world of silence. To understand the nature of deafness, first one has to understand the nature of hearing. Hearing is basically a specialized form of touch. Sound is simply vibrating air which the ear picks up and converts to electrical signals, which are then interpreted by the brain. The sense of hearing is not the only sense that can do this, touch can do this too.

If you are standing by the road and a large truck goes by, do you hear or feel the vibration? The answer is both. With very low frequency vibration the ear starts becoming inefficient and the rest of the body’s sense of touch starts to take over. For some reason we tend to make a distinction between hearing a sound and feeling a vibration, in reality they are the same thing. It is interesting to note that in the Italian language this distinction does not exist. The verb ‘sentire’ means to hear and the same verb in the reflexive form ‘sentirsi’ means to feel. Deafness does not mean that you can’t hear, only that there is something wrong with the ears. Even someone who is totally deaf can still hear/feel sounds. If we can all feel low frequency vibrations why can’t we feel higher vibrations? It is my belief that we can, it’s just that as the frequency gets higher and our ears become more efficient they drown out the more subtle sense of ‘feeling’ the vibrations. I spent a lot of time in my youth (with the help of my school Percussion teacher Ron Forbes) refining my ability to detect vibrations.

I would stand with my hands against the classroom wall while Ron played notes on the timpani (timpani produce a lot of vibrations). Eventually I managed to distinguish the rough pitch of notes by associating where on my body I felt the sound with the sense of perfect pitch I had before losing my hearing. The low sounds I feel mainly in my legs and feet and high sounds might be particular places on my face, neck and chest. It is worth pointing out at this stage that I am not totally deaf, I am profoundly deaf. Profound deafness covers a wide range of symptoms, although it is commonly taken to mean that the quality of the sound heard is not sufficient to be able to understand the spoken word from sound alone. With no other sound interfering, I can usually hear someone speaking although I cannot understand them without the additional input of lip-reading. In my case the amount of volume is reduced compared with normal hearing but more importantly the quality of the sound is very poor. For instance when a phone rings I hear a kind of crackle. However, it is a distinctive type of crackle that I associate with a phone so I know when the phone rings.

This is basically the same as how normally hearing people detect a phone, the phone has a distinctive type of ring which we associate with a phone. I can in fact communicate over the phone. I do most of the talking whilst the other person can say a few words by striking the transmitter with a pen, I hear this as clicks. I have a code that depends on the number of strikes or the rhythm that I can use to communicate a handful of words. So far we have the hearing of sounds and the feeling of vibrations. There is one other element to the equation, sight. We can also see items move and vibrate. If I see a drum head or cymbal vibrate or even see the leaves of a tree moving in the wind then subconsciously my brain creates a corresponding sound. A common and ill informed question from interviewers is “How can you be a musician when you can’t hear what you are doing?” The answer is of course that I couldn’t be a musician if I were not able to hear. Another often asked question is “How do you hear what you are playing?” The logical answer to this is; how does anyone hear?.

An electrical signal is generated in the ear and various bits of other information from our other senses all get sent to the brain which then processes the data to create a sound picture. The various processes involved in hearing a sound are very complex but we all do it subconsciously so we group all these processes together and call it simply listening. The same is true for me. Some of the processes or original information may be different but to hear sound all I do is to listen. I have no more idea of how I hear than you do. You will notice that more and more the answers are heading towards areas of philosophy. Who can say that when two normally hearing people hear a sound they hear the same sound? I would suggest that everyone’s hearing is different. All we can say is that the sound picture built up by their brain is the same, so that outwardly there is no difference. For me, as for all of us, I am better at certain things with my hearing than others. I need to lip-read to understand speech but my awareness of the acoustics in a concert venue is excellent. For instance, I will sometimes describe an acoustic in terms of how thick the air feels.

To summarize, my hearing is something that bothers other people far more than it bothers me. There are a couple of inconveniences but in general it doesn’t affect my life much. For me, my deafness is no more important than the fact I am female with brown eyes. Sure, I sometimes have to find solutions to problems related to my hearing and music but so do all musicians. Most of us know very little about hearing, even though we do it all the time. Likewise, I don’t know very much about deafness, what’s more I’m not particularly interested. I remember one occasion when uncharacteristically I became upset with a reporter for constantly asking questions only about my deafness. I said: “If you want to know about deafness, you should interview an audiologist. My speciality is music.” In this web page I have tried to explain something which I find very difficult to explain. Even so, no one really understands how I do what I do. Please enjoy the music and forget the rest. Credits This essay was written by Dame Evelyn Glennie and taken from here , a page at Dame Evelyn Glennie’s website at . Permission is given for writers and journalists to quote the essay, provided the above attributions are attached.

The Deaf Village If you would like to talk to other hearing aid users about any aspect of coping with deafness, consider visiting The Deaf Village at . There you will meet a friendly bunch of people who will be more than happy to share their experiences with you.

Question: Dame Evelyn Glennie, who is profoundly deaf, is a world-renowned what?
Answer: Percussionist