Feeling the music: Artis Adviser Dame Evelyn Glennie on Radio 4

Award winning musician Dame Evelyn Glennie’s relationship with percussion began as a child, when she started exploring the vibrations coming from drums with her percussion teacher: ‘he happened to strike a timpani or a kettle drum and realised that a tremendous amount of vibration was coming from that drum – he asked if I could feel it and I said yes, and then he struck another drum and I felt that differently.’

Being able to feel these different vibrations, in spite of her profound deafness, kick-started Evelyn Glennie’s career. Her method is now remarkably refined; she thinks about every element of each performance, from how she holds the sticks and mallets, to her relationship with the instrument, to how she holds her body, and her environment. Giving the example of the studio, she says: ‘here we are in a very dry acoustic… so I would imagine myself playing in a certain way, [and] using certain tools.’

Dame Evelyn Glennie’s technique relies on opening up to her surroundings. She says the body is ‘a resonating chamber. There is a tendency to think we should feed sound through the ears… but if we distribute sound to a larger area – that is throughout the whole body so that lower sounds are heard in the lower part of the body, and high sounds are felt in the upper part… we can have really different perspectives as regards to what sound really is and what our relationship with it is.’

As not only the first solo percussionist but the first hearing impaired student to be accepted to the Royal Academy of music, Dame Evelyn Glennie’s path was informed by access to music from a young age and the support of a dedicated teacher. She now actively promotes inclusion and access to the arts for all children. Using creativity to enhance learning across the curriculum, particularly for children who might be struggling is, she says, ‘so important, as… we are snowed under in trying to get exam results from schools, and we really need to tap in to other ways to get that creative aspect out of our young people [to] help them in enhancing all of their other skills, which music does so well.’

Click here to listen to the entire interview with Dame Evelyn Glennie on Radio 4 Saturday Live.

James Wilson/© Evelyn Glennie