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Considered a pioneer in the classical music community,
Evelyn Glennie is the first person to successfully create
and sustain a full-time career as a solo percussionist.
Having established an outstanding international career,
Ms. Glennie gives more than 100 performances a year
with the world’s finest orchestras and conductors
and in the world’s most prestigious concert halls.
Her unique ability to combine her exceptional musical
and technical abilities with a profound appreciation
of the visual elements of percussion has led to performances
of such vitality that they are redefining the concert
experience for audiences the world over.
Evelyn Glennie has met with exceptional success in
North America, where she devotes over four months of
her annual schedule to recitals, concerts and master
classes across the United States and Canada. She has
performed with, among others, the orchestras of Baltimore,
Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, Los Angeles, Montreal,
New York, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, Toronto,
and Washington, D.C. She has played with such distinguished
conductors as Christoph Eschenbach, Charles Dutoit,
Seiji Ozawa, Mstislav Rostropovich, Leonard Slatkin,
Esa-Pekka Salonen, and David Zinman. Ms. Glennie also
regularly appears throughout Asia, Europe, and the United
Kingdom, where she is a regular guest at the BBC Proms.
In addition to her active performing schedule, Evelyn
Glennie has worked tirelessly to expand the solo percussion
repertoire. She has commissioned more than 100 new works
for solo percussion, and the premieres of new works
are a continual presence on her concert tours.
Ms. Glennie has an exceptional recording career, having
recorded 17 discs encompassing many different genres
and including a wide variety of artists. Her first CD,
a recording of Bartok’s Sonata for Two Pianos
and Percussion, received a Grammy in 1988. Subsequent
solo recordings have garnered further awards including
a Classic CD award for her recording of MacMillan’s
“Veni, Veni Emmanuel,” and two Grammy nominations
for her recordings of Joseph Schwantner’s Concerto
for Percussion and Orchestra and “Reflected in
Brass: Evelyn Glennie Meets the Black Dyke Band.”
She received her second Grammy Award in 2002 for a collaboration
with Bela Fleck (Sony Classical). Ms. Glennie’s
12th solo CD, “Shadow Behind the Iron Sun”
(BMG Records), is her first fully improvised recording.
Her most recent releases are “Oriental Landscapes”
(BIS) and “Fractured Lines” by Mark-Anthony
Turnage (Chandos).
Evelyn Glennie is also known to a wide public through
her radio and television broadcasts. In addition to
documentaries for CBS and the BBC, Ms. Glennie’s
recent television appearances include “The David
Letterman Show” (USA), “Sesame Street”
(USA), “The Michael Barrymore Show” (UK)
and presenting and performing on “Songs of Praise”
(UK). Her Commonwealth Games Festival Concert was broadcast
on BBC4 and she is currently collaborating with the
renowned film director Thomas Riedelsheimer on a new
film. Ms. Glennie also composes and records music for
film and television, and her work has been nominated
for a British Academy of Film and Television Arts award
(BAFTA), the UK equivalent of the Oscars.
Evelyn Glennie was born in Aberdeen, Scotland, where
she studied timpani and percussion from the age of 12.
In 1982 she entered the Royal Academy of Music in London,
winning many prizes, including the Queen’s Commendation
Prize for all-around excellence, the highest award given
by the Royal Academy, and graduating with an honors
degree at the age of 19. In 1990, she was named “Scot’s
Woman of the Decade” and in 1993, at the age of
27, she was awarded the Officer of the British Empire
(OBE). Ms. Glennie is currently studying for degrees
in Psychology and Law. Her autobiography Good Vibrations
was published by Century Hutchinson in 1990 and by Simul
Press (Japan) in 1992. She maintains a website at: http://www.evelyn.co.uk,
which may be visited for more information about her
career.
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EVELYN
GLENNIE 
