Evelyn Glennie

Evelyn Glennie is a Scottish percussionist and composer who performs as a soloist. Profoundly deaf since adolescence, she experiences music through vibration as well as hearing.

Percussion: A family of musical instruments sounded by striking, shaking, scraping, or rubbing. Glennie’s instrument family supplies the broad palette for her solo performances.
Vibration: Repeated back-and-forth motion around an equilibrium position. Glennie describes sensing sound through vibrations transmitted to her body.
James MacMillan: A Scottish composer and conductor whose works include concertos for percussionist Evelyn Glennie. MacMillan wrote percussion concertos that helped expand Glennie’s orchestral solo repertoire.
Touch the Sound: A 2004 documentary by Thomas Riedelsheimer about Evelyn Glennie and her musical practice. The film gives a detailed portrait of Glennie’s embodied approach to percussion.
Timpani: Large kettle-shaped drums whose pitch can be changed by adjusting the tension of their heads. They show how Glennie uses pitched percussion as well as drums with indefinite pitches.
Sound: Mechanical waves that propagate through a medium and can produce auditory sensations. Her musical practice engages sound as physical vibration, not solely as something heard.
John Corigliano: An American composer whose music includes the percussion concerto Conjurer. Glennie premiered Corigliano’s Conjurer, a work built around a solo percussionist and orchestra.
Deaf culture: The shared languages, histories, and practices of communities connected by deafness and sign languages. Glennie’s public account of deafness intersects with broader debates about identity and representation.
Marimba: A pitched percussion instrument with wooden bars struck by mallets and resonators beneath them. Its resonant, tuneful range features in Glennie’s solo percussion repertoire.
Deafness: A degree of hearing loss that limits access to sound through the auditory system. Glennie’s experience is often discussed in relation to deafness, though it does not define her musicianship.

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