Multi-percussionist Evelyn Glennie shares her experience of 1980s London while adapting to hearing loss.
In the summer of 1982 at age 16 I left my home in rural Aberdeenshire with mixed feelings.
I was leaving a close farming community and an all-inclusive secondary school where my friends and I had been steeped in the many musical activities available to us, which was taught in those days. I was excited and impatient to get going and felt a great sense for change. I had the feeling a new chapter was beginning in my young life and it embraced me and I felt strong enough to move my life forward. I felt independent and quite 'grown up'.
I had always been a responsible person with responsibilities. My job was to help on the family farm and in particular I took care of the lambs whose mothers had rejected them for one reason or another. I would say I am a focused person and this became very important to me as my hearing loss worsened. I knew that securing a place at the Royal Academy of Music in London was important, no mean feat, and I wanted to make the most of my time there. I appreciated how much my parents supported me over the years even though there was never very much money around and I didn't want to waste such an impactful opportunity.
As a young player of percussion and piano music I had very few 'categories' or 'boxes' — everything was a discovery, so I didn't see music as classical, folk, traditional, pop or anything else; it was all new and interesting. As a result I gained as much pleasure playing Bartok's Háry János Suite with the Grampian Schools Orchestra as I did arranging the Elves Caprice for solo piano on the xylophone or playing drum kit in the Dam Busters with the school concert band. Music was music. It was the participating that was key, not the listening to recordings as we didn't have a record player (although eventually my brother Colin did get one and he would spend hours listening to Perry Como, Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra and other great crooners). I soon realised that playing solo percussion at the school concerts was the time I felt totally myself.
As a full-time student in London I was now thrust into an environment where I would have the opportunity to witness orchestral and chamber concerts by the London Symphony Orchestra, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and so many more. This opened up the doors to experiencing a wide myriad of repertoire by living and non-living composers. It also enabled me to witness great soloists perform. At that time I was most interested in studying how they negotiated their stage presence rather than the music they were actually performing.
The most influential group for me was 'The Fires of London' which was formed and directed by the late Sir Peter Maxwell Davies. This was cutting-edge music with players who really wanted to stretch their boundaries musically and physically. Seeing live performances provided me with a remarkable insight — the performances were tangible and real to me and I learned a great deal from them.
My hearing loss meant that listening to music through other means, such as the record player or radio, did not provide me with the taste, smell, touch or atmosphere I wanted to get from music. The 1980s were long before the explosion of websites or You Tube which now offers a creative visual side of music which I find enhances the senses, but still does not replace the presence of a live performance.
As a student I was introduced to festivals of living composers including the Pendereski Festival, the Tippett Festival and the Lutoslawski Festival — all of these composers were present and accessible which enabled me to approach them and discuss their often complicated and progressive music writing for percussion.
This accessibility enabled and influenced the way I approached and formed the body of repertoire for solo percussion. I had no choice but to approach and communicate with composers in order to have pieces written for me where none had existed before. It was fine to have the vision and desire to become the first-ever full-time solo percussionist in the world, but I needed to make sure the career was sustainable.
I was constantly feeling vibration from all directions
Living in London and being exposed to so many diverse live performances reinforced my feeling that I was a musician and the only categorisation I would allow to be used to describe myself was 'solo percussionist'. I was not comfortable being classed as a 'classical solo percussionist', I wanted to keep hold of the sense of discovery I had at school — where we were all 'musicians' — I can't ever remember any of us being categorised as classical musicians at school.
Being in London in the 1980s also exposed me to a hugely diverse range of people, fashion, independence and new experiences. All these aspects bombarded my senses with colour and vibrancy: there was never a moment when my body was silent, I was constantly feeling vibration from all directions.
Black cabs contrasted with red double decker buses, streets lined with enormous buildings and street markets alongside huge stores, statues, fountains all under the seasonal skies. My visual colour palette became exciting and often overloaded and was fed by so many aspects of my new fast-paced life. Travelling underground out of sight felt almost claustrophobic. I felt I had to search for green places to remind myself of home and the nature I had left behind.
I saw London as a whole 'orchestra'. The city was the polar opposite to what I had been used to. There was no peace, every day was filled with a complete sensory overload. For me sound is felt, experienced through the body and the sheer volume I was experiencing had increased beyond measure. The farm had so many open spaces and natural sound experiences such as feeling the wind on my face, seeing the sway of wheat fields and watching the leaves rustle and swirl. In London the sound world overloaded my senses, tubes, buses, traffic in general contributed to a sense of constant noise awareness. Feeling volumes through the body is similar to trying to listen to lots of sounds at the same time — it can be overwhelming.
I felt my education at Ellon Academy in Aberdeenshire provided me with a 'can do' spirit which served me well as I coped with the rules and regulations at the Royal Academy of Music. Here I felt a sense of institutionalisation at that time in the 1980s, partly because I was the only female percussionist whereas at Ellon Academy I had been one of many female percussionists. I later learned that in accepting me into the Royal Academy its attitudes changed in that they began to accept students purely based on their abilities regardless of disabilities: as long as students were able to demonstrate music skills equal to the entry level for understanding music, they would now be accepted.
the start of my working life gave me the opportunity to perform the music I wanted to perform
In the 1980s writing letters to my family was my only form of independent communication. My hearing loss meant that I required assistance using the telephone, I would ask someone to listen on my behalf before I spoke, much the same as I still do today. Travelling to and from London and Aberdeen could be exhausting and would take almost 12 hours by train. All the journeys were overnight — sadly there was no 'sleeper' facility at that time and of course I was always the last one to get off the train in Aberdeen. The emergence of fax machines was a godsend — they gave me independence, and I was able to communicate more regularly with my family.
During my student years I began to be involved in paid work, although this was not generally encouraged at the time. Working with TV and some Japanese advertising companies, plus occasional performances in the evenings, provided me with some income and a great sense of excitement, especially where there was room for personal input. In essence, the start of my working life gave me the opportunity to perform the music I wanted to perform in the way I wanted to use my own creative skills. Of course there are some aspects of music that are determined by others such as conductor-led orchestral performances.
The late great percussionist and writer James Blades visited the Royal Academy one day per term. It was such an honour to be in his company. He became my mentor and was one of very few who believed in my vision to be a solo percussionist. James encouraged and stimulated individual style and expression which has stood me in good stead and I will always be indebted to him. He was a great communicator with all people and believed that each person has a story to tell. I realised that despite hundreds of students practicing for hours on end in the heights and depths of the Royal Academy, the art of communication was a very key ingredient to nurture because we cannot all be dependent on our musical instruments all of the time in the business of music.
I am proud to say I am still in touch with some of the people I worked alongside in the 1980s. One of them is the composer John McLeod who came from Aberdeen and has lived in Edinburgh for many years. John wrote the first professional Percussion Concerto I commissioned, which I then played with the Nashville Symphony Orchestra and was the first USA orchestra I had ever performed with. In 1989 John also wrote 'The Song of Dionysius' which I included in the first ever percussion recital in the history of the Henry Wood Proms in London.
Other aspects that proved to have both positive and negative influences on my life in music have been events that include the deeply disturbing Lockerbie Flight in 1988, shrouding us with the notion that international terrorism was extremely close to our doorstep. This event and others since have had an immense effect on my life in music, not least of all because of the travel that I undertake in order to perform around the world.<./p>
For me travel and music go hand in hand. In the 1980s it was not uncommon for me to spend several hours and days travelling by road in a truck with my percussion instruments. Travel also includes a great deal of paperwork and I would probably have spent as much time completing a variety of documents such as carnets for every single musical item, mallet and tool I was transporting as I would be spending in rehearsal. Restrictions became so tight on flights that I was forced to think outside the box and decided to set up a storage facilities in the USA and Japan to retain some of my percussion instruments rather than pay several times a year for them to be shipped around the world over.
I soon realised London was the place to be if I was to progress my career
Travel itself has been a lifelong necessity for me from driving a tractor on our family farm to cars, trucks and even achieving my motorbike licence, not to mention a complimentary flying lesson at Dyce Airport when I turned 21! On the one hand it is essential in order to meet my performance commitments, but on the other hand it can mean I am a long way from my family. On hearing about Chernobyl on 26 April 1986 I was deeply concerned for my friends and family as I watched the news describing the way the fallout of nuclear waste was drifting over the north of England and Scotland.
My first long-distance travel took me to countries including Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Brazil and the USA. These journeys brought home to me the importance of my home in London. I soon realised London was the place to be if I was to progress my career, the accessibility to music and performances coupled with people who could help me to raise the idea that percussion could be brought to the forefront of the orchestra made London in the 1980s a very exciting place.
Music has brought me close to many exciting events and meetings with interesting people including Queen Elizabeth, whom I have had the good fortune to meet on several occasions, and several other members of the Royal family. I also remember the beautiful smile of the late Princess Diana as she handed me my degree in 1985. She was so kind and pleasant, immensely interested in our next chapter after graduation and I'll always remember her stunning sense of style and gracious manner.
Fashion in the 1980s was particularly memorable because of the diversity of the many designers in London at the time. As I began to be invited on to mainstream television programmes such as 'Wogan', 'Des O'Connor', 'Swap Shop' and many more, I took advice from the wardrobe ladies on the style and fashion of clothes that were suitable for me. It soon became clear that I needed to choose items which were versatile and comfortable and a style that suited my personality. Long dresses quickly became a no-no because they often restricted movement. Some styles of shoes too were challenging especially those with wedge heels — I began to perform bare-footed and in doing so I opened up my body to a sense of sound that came up through the soles of my feet on the platform.
As my performing career took off I was fortunate to be offered a long-term recording contract with BMG. My first solo recording in 1989 now set the scene for other percussionists to believe in and pursue a career as a solo percussionist. I was the only percussion player that had my own section in record stores like HMV. Huge posters of me were displayed in the underground for the first three or four solo releases which was unheard of for a solo percussionist. On the back of these successes I was able to purchase my first flat in 1988 where I paid the asking price because that's how it was done in Scotland and I assumed it was the same for the whole of the UK — I have since learned to barter!
I went on to spend many hours in the kitchen of my one-bedroom flat writing my autobiography 'Good Vibrations' on my typewriter. My first GRAMMY followed in 1989 for Bartok's 'Sonata for 2 Pianos and Percussion' with the late Sir Georg Solti, Murray Perahia and David Corkhill. At this point I engaged my first PA and my tiny kitchen became an office! Eventually I realised that a one-bedroom flat in London was not suitable for progressing and sustaining a full time career as the world's first full-time solo percussionist. The logistics from housing my large collection of percussion instruments, finding space to practice and the need to be in a purer sound environment meant I needed to embrace the new decade and move out of town. But the vibrations of those formative years in London stayed with me.
