EVELYN GLENNIE
The extraordinary percussionist uses her whole body to hear
1 Early adaptation Percussionist Evelyn Glennie has been profoundly deaf since the age of 12, which forced her to develop her ability to hear through the rest of her body. She initially honed this ability by feeling the wall in her music room in high school as her percussion teacher tuned a timpani. “I could feel the vibrations in my hands and lower parts of my legs, so I got the pitch that way,” she told Modern Drummer in 1989. “I can also put my fingertips on the edge and feel it that way. There are countless ways of really hearing a particular instrument.” 2 Shoes off She performs barefoot or in stocking feet to help her feel the vibrations through the floor (Her 1990 autobiography was titled Good Vibrations). “The body’s like a huge ear,” she told the Globe and Mail in 2011. 3 Trailblazer Initially, Glennie was rejected when she applied to study at the Royal Academy of Music in London because they weren’t sure how to handle her deafness. “If you refuse me for those reasons as opposed to the ability to perform, and to understand, and love the art of creating sound, then we have to think very, very hard about the people you do actually accept,” she told them, as she explains in a 2003 Ted Talk. She auditioned again, and they accepted her, which had a ripple effect on applications to music institutions across the country. “Every single entry had to be listened to and experienced,” she says, and then judged based on musical ability rather than rejected based on other criteria. 4 Full trophy case Glennie has gone on to a much-lauded career. She was the first to perform a percussion concerto at the Royal Academy and the first percussionist named Dame Commander of the British Empire in 2008. 5 New sound Glennie joins the Land’s End Ensemble for their 20th anniversary celebration on Friday and a performance of a new piece for drum kit and piano trio composed by Land’s End’s artistic director, Vincent Ho. Glennie and Ho previously collaborated on The Shaman, a percussion concerto that was performed at Carnegie Hall’s Spring for Music Festival in May 2014. —Jon Roe