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Evelyn Glennie: Percussionist Solo Drummer & Deaf

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 Evelyn Glennie was born in 1965 near Aberdeen in Scotland. She grew up on her parents´ farm with her two brothers. At the age of twelve she became interested in the snare drum. It was around this time that her hearing began to deteriorate as the result of a neurological disorder. A few years later she was eighty per cent deaf. However, her Scottish stubbornness would not let her give up. She learnt to feel the vibrations of the notes and to distinguish between them with the help of different areas of sensitivity throughout her body.

Evelyn had one goal -   to play classical percussion. Not at the back of the orchestra but as a solo performer, an independent artist. However, quite apart from the fact that many people believed that both her poor hearing and her small, petite stature would prove an insuperable barrier, there was no established solo percussionist role to serve as a model. Evelyn's  inexhaustible energy swept all objections aside. In 1988 she won a Grammy for her first CD recording. Over the following years she played with all the great orchestras of the world and recorded   a dozen CDs. She worked with Brazilian samba groups, Japanese kodo drummers, Indonesian gamelan orchestras and with the Icelandic rock singer, Björk. She commissioned contemporary pieces for percussion, thereby constantly expanding her repertoire.