Miss-Delectable
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Scotland on Sunday - Review - She bangs the drum
YOU would expect the world's first and greatest solo percussionist to have a few drums and mallets lying around, but on every available surface in Evelyn Glennie's house there is a percussive instrument. The house feels unlived in, as if it's the instruments that stay here and their owner only pops in now and then. In this five-bedroom converted barn in a village in Cambridgeshire, where Glennie has lived for the past 15 years (the last few on her own), there are snares, bodhráns, vibraphones, xylophones, a gigantic gong and African djembes. Then the mistress of the house appears in one of the many doorways, mug of coffee in hand.
There is an air of bold, LA-style glamour about Glennie, with her long, thick hair that looks like it gets a hundred rigorous brushes each day, elegant trousers and Sixties swirling blouse. Perhaps it stems from the fact that she spends most of her time now touring the States, but it is also her brash confidence, and the fact that listening to her is like being in the presence of a motivational speaker (in fact, she is a motivational speaker, as well as being a musician, a lecturer and producing her own range of jewellery). She often uses phrases such as "making a difference" or "feeling desire without anxiousness" and it's hard to get beneath all of this to the impressive 42-year-old woman who teaches deaf children to "sense" music, and who loves riding motorbikes because "it's like playing the road".
As soon as Glennie opens her mouth, her perfectly preserved north-east accent betrays her upbringing on an Aberdeenshire farm in the Sixties and Seventies when evenings "would end in traditional music and singing". She has Scotland to thank, she says, for the determination and drive (some would say workaholism) that led the teenage Glennie to decide that not only did she want to be the best percussionist in the world, she also wanted to be the first to take her instruments to the front of the stage and play them on her own.
"Stubbornness is one of my fortes," she says. "Some of it is from having grown up on a farm, of having routine, of not being handed things on a plate. Whenever I do go home, no one is like, 'Oh my god, it's Evelyn Glennie', they say, 'Ah, Evelyn's back.' Scots just expect you to get on with it and not create a fuss. If you've been brought up on a farm, it's all about doing - very little is said. I know about rolling your sleeves up and working."
A few years ago, Glennie divorced Greg Malcangi, her husband of almost 10 years, following her widely publicised affair with the US conductor Leonard Slatkin. Malcangi complained: "The problem with Evelyn is that she's a very selfish and self-centred woman who thinks she can do pretty much what she likes and get what she wants." That said, the fact that Glennie gives more than 100 performances each year means it's hardly surprising that relationships take a back seat.
It's when Glennie talks about her love of "listening", and of being a musician, that any façade falls away and she opens up more. She has been profoundly deaf since the age of 12, when she lost 95% of her hearing, and famously "feels" sound through vibrations, often performing barefoot to heighten her senses. Interestingly though, Glennie doesn't see any connection between her deafness and the choices she ended up making, though interpreting the different sounds in an orchestra would surely have been tough for her. "I just didn't feel right in an orchestra," she insists. "I just wanted to play and I needed to get that out." Watching her perform, a one-woman whirlwind making use of up to 60 instruments in a single performance, you don't doubt it.
"When I started, I was curious about percussion and wanted to have a go," she says of picking up her first drumsticks at Ellon Academy. It was here that Glennie's mentor taught her to "feel" music, by making her stand with her hands against the classroom wall as he played the timpani. "Then I wanted to be the best percussionist in the world, and then I wanted to be the first solo percussionist. Now all of that has gone out of the window, and I just want something to say, musically. It's important for me to have created other businesses so that if I suddenly break an arm, the company can keep going; it's not reliant on Evelyn Glennie appearing on stage."
So, these days, though Glennie's output would still put most musicians in the shade, she seems more focused on the business. "It's not about soaking yourself too much in the business and the world you work in," she warns. "For example, the last thing I want to do is listen to music. I've got no real interest in listening to music in my spare time - that's when I want to do something completely different, like ride my bike."
In a recent promotional video on her website (Glennie is, of course, a powerhouse of self-promotion), she says: "My aim, really, is to teach the world to listen. That's my only real aim in life." Only Glennie could get away with making such a grandiose claim, and that's simply because you know she means it. This is a woman who has her own registered tartan, who wrote her autobiography when she was 26, and who has single-handedly created a repertoire for solo percussion, commissioning more than 140 works. Glennie is much more than a virtuoso musician - she's an empire.
When she got fed up with people asking her "ill-informed, lazy and predictable" questions about her deafness, she wrote two essays about hearing and disability, and published them on her website. "It was a relief to write it down," she says. "When you take hearing, it's all about sound, but sound is vibration which can be felt. Deaf people are more likely to tune into vibrations, so 'deaf' and 'sound' actually go together. It's the same as what people used to say about solo percussion. Even though you've got more instruments to choose from, people say it's the salt and pepper of the orchestra, and so you can't do it on its own. Of course you can."
Glennie has just returned from a two-week stint in Russia, South Korea and Japan, and is about to head to Austria and then the States before coming to Scotland to perform in recital at the Edinburgh International Festival, where she hasn't played for many years. Not that she seems lonely. In fact, she likes living on her own and devoting herself to her career. "I find it's for me and I much prefer it, I really do," she says, then laughs and tells me she is supposed to be on holiday.
"I'm very bad at taking time off," she confesses. "But I love to come home. That's why I like to do the cleaning myself and my own ironing and gardening, to refamiliarise myself with my own things. Being away such a lot feels right to me and if it feels right, then it is right. It's about listening to yourself. Everything goes back to listening."
• Dame Evelyn Glennie is in recital at the Edinburgh International Festival, August 18, 8pm, Usher Hall Dame Evelyn Glennie, Motivational Speaker, Media Composer, Jewellery Designer
YOU would expect the world's first and greatest solo percussionist to have a few drums and mallets lying around, but on every available surface in Evelyn Glennie's house there is a percussive instrument. The house feels unlived in, as if it's the instruments that stay here and their owner only pops in now and then. In this five-bedroom converted barn in a village in Cambridgeshire, where Glennie has lived for the past 15 years (the last few on her own), there are snares, bodhráns, vibraphones, xylophones, a gigantic gong and African djembes. Then the mistress of the house appears in one of the many doorways, mug of coffee in hand.
There is an air of bold, LA-style glamour about Glennie, with her long, thick hair that looks like it gets a hundred rigorous brushes each day, elegant trousers and Sixties swirling blouse. Perhaps it stems from the fact that she spends most of her time now touring the States, but it is also her brash confidence, and the fact that listening to her is like being in the presence of a motivational speaker (in fact, she is a motivational speaker, as well as being a musician, a lecturer and producing her own range of jewellery). She often uses phrases such as "making a difference" or "feeling desire without anxiousness" and it's hard to get beneath all of this to the impressive 42-year-old woman who teaches deaf children to "sense" music, and who loves riding motorbikes because "it's like playing the road".
As soon as Glennie opens her mouth, her perfectly preserved north-east accent betrays her upbringing on an Aberdeenshire farm in the Sixties and Seventies when evenings "would end in traditional music and singing". She has Scotland to thank, she says, for the determination and drive (some would say workaholism) that led the teenage Glennie to decide that not only did she want to be the best percussionist in the world, she also wanted to be the first to take her instruments to the front of the stage and play them on her own.
"Stubbornness is one of my fortes," she says. "Some of it is from having grown up on a farm, of having routine, of not being handed things on a plate. Whenever I do go home, no one is like, 'Oh my god, it's Evelyn Glennie', they say, 'Ah, Evelyn's back.' Scots just expect you to get on with it and not create a fuss. If you've been brought up on a farm, it's all about doing - very little is said. I know about rolling your sleeves up and working."
A few years ago, Glennie divorced Greg Malcangi, her husband of almost 10 years, following her widely publicised affair with the US conductor Leonard Slatkin. Malcangi complained: "The problem with Evelyn is that she's a very selfish and self-centred woman who thinks she can do pretty much what she likes and get what she wants." That said, the fact that Glennie gives more than 100 performances each year means it's hardly surprising that relationships take a back seat.
It's when Glennie talks about her love of "listening", and of being a musician, that any façade falls away and she opens up more. She has been profoundly deaf since the age of 12, when she lost 95% of her hearing, and famously "feels" sound through vibrations, often performing barefoot to heighten her senses. Interestingly though, Glennie doesn't see any connection between her deafness and the choices she ended up making, though interpreting the different sounds in an orchestra would surely have been tough for her. "I just didn't feel right in an orchestra," she insists. "I just wanted to play and I needed to get that out." Watching her perform, a one-woman whirlwind making use of up to 60 instruments in a single performance, you don't doubt it.
"When I started, I was curious about percussion and wanted to have a go," she says of picking up her first drumsticks at Ellon Academy. It was here that Glennie's mentor taught her to "feel" music, by making her stand with her hands against the classroom wall as he played the timpani. "Then I wanted to be the best percussionist in the world, and then I wanted to be the first solo percussionist. Now all of that has gone out of the window, and I just want something to say, musically. It's important for me to have created other businesses so that if I suddenly break an arm, the company can keep going; it's not reliant on Evelyn Glennie appearing on stage."
So, these days, though Glennie's output would still put most musicians in the shade, she seems more focused on the business. "It's not about soaking yourself too much in the business and the world you work in," she warns. "For example, the last thing I want to do is listen to music. I've got no real interest in listening to music in my spare time - that's when I want to do something completely different, like ride my bike."
In a recent promotional video on her website (Glennie is, of course, a powerhouse of self-promotion), she says: "My aim, really, is to teach the world to listen. That's my only real aim in life." Only Glennie could get away with making such a grandiose claim, and that's simply because you know she means it. This is a woman who has her own registered tartan, who wrote her autobiography when she was 26, and who has single-handedly created a repertoire for solo percussion, commissioning more than 140 works. Glennie is much more than a virtuoso musician - she's an empire.
When she got fed up with people asking her "ill-informed, lazy and predictable" questions about her deafness, she wrote two essays about hearing and disability, and published them on her website. "It was a relief to write it down," she says. "When you take hearing, it's all about sound, but sound is vibration which can be felt. Deaf people are more likely to tune into vibrations, so 'deaf' and 'sound' actually go together. It's the same as what people used to say about solo percussion. Even though you've got more instruments to choose from, people say it's the salt and pepper of the orchestra, and so you can't do it on its own. Of course you can."
Glennie has just returned from a two-week stint in Russia, South Korea and Japan, and is about to head to Austria and then the States before coming to Scotland to perform in recital at the Edinburgh International Festival, where she hasn't played for many years. Not that she seems lonely. In fact, she likes living on her own and devoting herself to her career. "I find it's for me and I much prefer it, I really do," she says, then laughs and tells me she is supposed to be on holiday.
"I'm very bad at taking time off," she confesses. "But I love to come home. That's why I like to do the cleaning myself and my own ironing and gardening, to refamiliarise myself with my own things. Being away such a lot feels right to me and if it feels right, then it is right. It's about listening to yourself. Everything goes back to listening."
• Dame Evelyn Glennie is in recital at the Edinburgh International Festival, August 18, 8pm, Usher Hall Dame Evelyn Glennie, Motivational Speaker, Media Composer, Jewellery Designer
