Deaf percussionist to wow listeners at Late Night Proms | Music | Entertainment

An inspiring performer will make her 19th appearance on Tuesday at Britain’s greatest celebration of music – The Proms. Standing barefoot on the famous stage of the Royal Albert Hall in London, Dame Evelyn Glennie will again prove that music is about far more than hearing.

The double Grammy Award winning solo percussionist, the only deaf recipient of the prestigious gong, who began losing her hearing at the age of eight, has spent a lifetime redefining what it means to be a musician.

Now aged 61, she has become one of Britain’s most admired performers, an international advocate for inclusion and education, and the driving force behind a mission she hopes will outlive her – teaching the world to listen.

“This will be my 19th Prom but my first time giving a Late Night Prom, so it’ll be a wonderful experience,” she says. „And of course sharing the platform with the BBC Singers and the Fantasia Orchestra will be very special indeed.”

The Late Night Prom on Tuesday (AUG 11) promises to be one of this year’s most adventurous concerts, bringing together Vaughan Williams’s Serenade to Music, originally written in honour of Proms founder Sir Henry Wood, alongside music inspired by Radiohead, jazz giants Duke Ellington and John Coltrane, Caroline Shaw’s Pulitzer Prize winning Partita and a world premiere from Héloïse Werner.

For Dame Evelyn, it perfectly captures everything the Proms has always represented. “The Proms are incredibly important,” she says. “It’s such a unique festival. The length of the festival, the diversity of the festival and the demographic who attends it are absolutely extraordinary.

“When you think about the history of the Proms, there’s nothing like it anywhere else in the world. It really is a celebration of human creativity, where we’re celebrating the most extraordinary new music.”

She believes that enduring success lies in its ability to embrace every generation: “The Proms celebrate young talent coming through alongside professionals who are legends. It’s right across the board.

“They’ve embraced what society is about and ultimately they’re keeping alive the importance of the creative spirit and how music truly is that bridge between one person and another.”

Dame Evelyn performs barefoot to allow her body to absorb the vibrations travelling through the stage. This year’s featured instrument is the halo, a percussion instrument that sits across her lap.

“It looks almost like a spaceship,” she laughs. “It’s an instrument I use for composing as well as performing and it featured in the music I wrote with Dan Jones for ITV’s Code of Silence.”

For audiences watching, it is another reminder that Dame Evelyn experiences music differently.

She has never accepted that deafness should define or limit what is possible. Instead, she has spent decades helping others understand that sound is something we experience with our whole bodies.

“Music consists of vibration,” she explains. “That’s what sound is. Our bodies are like one huge ear. When people see me on stage it allows them to reflect on what music really is and what a musician is.”

Through the Evelyn Glennie Foundation, she works with schools, universities, businesses, prisons and healthcare organisations, encouraging people to understand that listening is one of life’s greatest skills.

“Our mission is to teach the world to listen,” she says. “It’s an organic progression from what my whole career has been about. No matter what profession you’re in, listening is at the core of what we do.

“Whether you’re in an office, talking with colleagues, discussing a project, standing at a bus stop or waiting in a queue, how we listen is absolutely crucial.”

Her mission has also preserved one of Britain’s most remarkable private collections of musical history. Housed in Cambridgeshire, the Evelyn Glennie Collection contains more than 3,800 percussion instruments, alongside thousands of photographs, concert programmes, letters, percussion scores, costumes, tickets and memorabilia gathered throughout Dame Evelyn’s extraordinary career.

She describes it as far more than a museum: “It’s really a journey of humanity focusing on communication.”

Visitors, schools and educators can arrange visits, but Dame Evelyn is determined the collection will continue to grow long after her own lifetime.

“It is an important collection,” she says. “It cannot stop once I’ve passed away. It will keep growing and whoever is looking after it will continue enlarging the collection. As more things become digital, there’s an awful lot that has to be explored and catalogued.”

Among the treasures are instruments dating back to the late 1700s and early 1800s, including a rare glass xylophone, a crystallophone. But one object has a particularly extraordinary story.

An Ugandan drum once owned by legendary percussionist James Blades was used to record the BBC’s Morse code identification signal that was broadcast repeatedly throughout World War Two.

“He was probably the most listened to drummer in the world,” Dame Evelyn says with a smile. “And we have the actual drum that created that sound.”

Although celebrated across the globe as the world’s foremost solo percussionist, she remains disarmingly modest about her own achievements. Receiving her Damehood from the late Queen in 2007 is something she still struggles to believe happened.

“It was obviously a huge surprise,” she recalls. “I genuinely thought, ‘Well, that’s definitely gone to the wrong person.’ I had to read the letter a few times and ask other people to read it just to make sure. It was a wonderful honour, but with honours comes responsibility. They make you pause and reflect on everyone who has helped you reach that point.”

Dame Evelyn has spent years campaigning for better access to music, education and opportunities for disabled people.

“I don’t want to be hostage to receiving an honour just to make a difference,” she says. “We’re all in a position to make a difference, no matter what we do or where we are in our journey.”

She is equally realistic about the work required to stay at the top: “I was brought up seeing what hard work looked like and that’s remained with me. You can’t take anything for granted in this business. You can’t turn up at the Proms without practising.

“A sportsperson can’t run the 100 metres without training, just because they’ve been doing it for years. The nuts and bolts always have to be oiled day in and day out. Nobody else can do that for you.

Reflecting on Beethoven, Dame Evelyn believes society now has a far broader understanding of disability than ever before.

“When you think about Beethoven, he had nothing like the technology we have today, yet he created these remarkable masterpieces after losing his hearing. We have a different definition of disability now because of technology, inclusiveness and opportunity. For people to see me on stage allows them to think differently.”

This philosophy brought one of the defining moments of modern British cultural history during the London 2012 Olympic Opening Ceremony, when she led more than 1,000 volunteer drummers in Danny Boyle’s unforgettable Industrial Revolution sequence.

She recalls: “We weren’t teaching people how to play percussion. We were telling the story. We wanted a really smelly, sweaty, hard-working sound.”

More than four decades after first stepping onto a concert platform, Dame Evelyn remains as curious as ever. “I’m still driven by wanting to practise, wanting to explore more instruments and wanting to stay curious. Playing an instrument is like an extension of our bodies.

“I think about sound more than music because sound can completely transfix people if it reaches a certain frequency. As soon as we enter the world, sound and music should be part of our food, water and shelter. It is essential.”

*Dame Evelyn will perform with the Fantasia Orchestra and the BBC Singers in the Late Night Prom at the Royal Albert Hall on Tuesday. You can listen to the Proms live on BBC Radio 3.