Evelyn Glennie

Evelyn Glennie is a force of nature, a gift of music to the world. This young Scotswoman has carved a new place for solo percussion in the realm of classical music, and has melded traditions and instrumentation from around the world to create new ways of performing and, indeed, of hearing percussion as music in its own right. Because she has defied convention by crossing the traditionally rigid boundaries of formal, folkloric, and popular musical forms, this uncommonly versatile musician has managed to draw new audiences to the classical world. In so doing, she has collected 53 awards including a Grammy, and has won the acclaim of the world's most venerable musicians and critics, who must stretch their vocabularies to describe this "thrilling, hyperkinetic wild woman" and the "glorious ruckus she creates." The breadth and originality of Glennie's talent make any attempt to define her incomplete. She appears regularly with the top orchestras and conductors of the world, and if she could perform as a soloist, Glennie would be as comfortable and accomplished playing in a rock band, a folk group, a Gamelan Orchestra (an orchestra made up of mainly tuned percussion instruments), a jazz band, an African, Middle Eastern, Latin or Asian ensemble. Her virtuosity and restless musical imagination have spawned a career that has brought her to five continents, and encompasses more than 110 concerts per season; 16 solo recordings; collaborations with musicians ranging from Brazilian percussionist Nana Vasconcelos to the Icelandic pop star Bjork, and the Japanese drummers, Kodo; a host of award-winning film and television scores; and a powerful, best-selling autobiography.

Glennie has already secured a place in music history. She was the first ever full-time solo percussionist in the field of classical music, and is unanimously credited with transforming the role of percussive instruments within this highly conservative world. She is also responsible for bringing life to the severely limited classical repertoire by commissioning more than eighty new works from some of the world's top contemporary composers.

When she began to play professionally in 1985, and for the first ten years of her career, virtually every performance Glennie gave was in some way a first—either it was the first performance of a new percussion concerto, the first time an orchestra had performed with a solo percussionist, or the first solo percussion performance at a festival or venue.

Explaining her impact, The New York Times has called Glennie "the percussion world's Segovia or Rampal," 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." And in the words of Leonard Slatkin, Music Director of the National Symphony Orchestra, "She has done for percussion what James Galway did for the flute and Richard Stolzman for the clarinet. She has gotten young people turned on to music in a setting other than jazz or rock. I also suspect that by her ability and personality she will have inspired lots of people to go into the profession."

Despite all of Glennie's awards, and her designation as an Officer of the British Empire—it is extremely rare for anyone under the age of about 50 to get this title, and Glennie was 27 when she received it—the most important praise she receives comes from her public: she was voted Scots Woman of the Decade and the International Classical Music Personality of the Year (the classical music world's equivalent of the Academy Awards), where she garnered more votes than Pavarotti.

In the context of such a vibrant and illustrious career, the fact that Glennie has been profoundly deaf since the age of twelve seems, at first, amazing. But for her, it is virtually irrelevant. Hearing is basically a specialized form of touch and sound is simply vibrating air which the ear picks up and converts to electrical signals which are then interpreted in the brain. Glennie can identify the notes according to the vibrations she feels through her feet and body.