Evelyn Glennie

  b. 1965 | Scottish percussionist

At The Bottom

— 1977

"I was looking at the prospect of being classified for life as disabled, and cut off from the music that was beginning to seem vital to my own happiness."

Since the age of eight, Evelyn Glennie had been aware that she was having difficulty with her hearing.  Over the next few years, the sounds of the world faded so gradually that she often did not notice the progression of her deafness.  When her rural Scottish primary school replaced its old bell with an electronic signal, for example, she suddenly realized that she had been responding to the vibrations of the bell rather than the sound itself.  Doctors eventually diagnosed her with gradual, irreversible nerve damage, but they could never pinpoint the cause.  For a while, hearing aids helped young Glennie, who feared that the loss of her hearing would interfere with her efforts to learn to play the piano and the clarinet, as well as a variety of other musical instruments in which she’d taken a great interest.  Her teachers recognized her extraordinary young talent, and at the age of nine she received the highest mark in the UK on the Grade One exam for the Trinity College of Music.  In recognition of her performance, she was invited to perform at Cowdray Hall in Aberdeen; by then, however, her auditory nerves had degenerated so badly that she could not hear her own name being called when it was time to perform.  She was fitted for more powerful hearing aids, but she grew increasingly frustrated.  As she wrote in her autobiography, “I was looking at the prospect of being classified for life as disabled, and cut off from the music that was beginning to seem vital to my own happiness.” By the age of twelve, Glennie was almost completely deaf.