THIS WEEK’S MUSE
EVELYN GLENNIE
“Music is about communication…it isn’t just something that maybe physically sounds good or orally sounds interesting; it’s something far, far deeper than that.”
In 1973, 8-year-old Evelyn Glennie began to go deaf. By twelve she was diagnosed as profoundly deaf. At nineteen, in her third year at London’s Royal Academy of Music, she delivered the first percussion concerto ever performed there. Today, she is recognized as one of the world’s leading percussionists.
Glennie was born in 1965 in Methlick, a small village in northeast Scotland. She played piano and clarinet at school but switched to percussion after watching someone playing xylophone. “She was brilliant,” Glennie said, “just amazing, and I thought, ‘I didn’t realize a xylophone could do this.’”
Up to that moment she had no ambition to become a musician but when she tried xylophone herself at school, it immediately felt right. Later, when trying to tune timpani, her teacher suggested she use her hands to feel the vibrations. Gradually she taught herself to feel when the tuning was right.
“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.”
The technique of feeling sound and music was helped by performing barefoot. Despite her deafness—or perhaps because of it—she decided this was going to be her career.
Today, Glennie tours worldwide, performing as a soloist with a variety of orchestras and musicians, and has a discography of over thirty-five albums. With her amazing determination, brilliant musicianship—and expert lip-reading skills—she has conquered the music world. She doesn’t consider herself a deaf but rather a musician with a hearing impairment. “I’m not a deaf musician. I’m a musician who happens to be deaf.”
When she first decided to become a solo percussionist, she was told it was impossible. It had never been done before and there was no career path. But thanks to her determination and self-belief that has now changed. “Once you believe in something, she says, “you know it’s absolutely possible to do.”
“Society cannot continue to disable themselves through their need to categorize people or make assumptions as to another individual’s abilities.”
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.”
“I want to be able to say on my deathbed that I reached a few people. That would be very nice, just to be able to say that.”
HAPPENING
Thursday, September 29, from 10–12:30pm
RICOTTA GNOCCHI WITH PUMPKIN SAGE SAUCE
With Linda Sellner
Enjoy the flavor of Fall with fluffy clouds of pumpkin gnocchi.
$50 – Member, $55 – Non-Member