Evelyn Glennie Quotes:
The thing about playing percussion is that you can create all these emotions that can be sometimes beautiful, sometimes really ugly, or sometimes sweet, sometimes as big as King Kong and so on. And so there can be a real riot out there, or it can be so refined.
Evelyn Glennie
If I just simply let go, and allow my hand, my arm, to be more of a support system, suddenly – I have more dynamic with less effort. Much more, and I just feel, at last, one with the stick, and one with the drum.
Evelyn Glennie
I am really quite fascinated by echo-locating bats and dolphins and have always wondered how sound affects the unconscious brain.
Evelyn Glennie
Anything you strike, anything you shake or rattle, or just anything that can be picked up, and you can create a sound.
Evelyn Glennie
I suppose I don’t hear things, but I listen, if you know what I mean. And there is a big difference between hearing and listening. So it’s like a conversation, you know. When you speak to someone, it’s one on one, and that’s exactly how I play.
Evelyn Glennie
Before my teen years, I was losing my hearing pretty quickly, and I was getting very, very angry. I was beginning to become an angry person because of that.
Evelyn Glennie
Music is about communication… it isn’t just something that maybe physically sounds good or orally sounds interesting; it’s something far, far deeper than that.
Evelyn Glennie
Once you’re in a particular country, and you’re surrounded by musicians who are so adept at traditional music, you suddenly realize how much there is to explore and digest and learn and experience.
Evelyn Glennie
Concerts have to be seen as a real event for which the aim is to try and feed everybody.
Evelyn Glennie
Percussion is the most adaptable family of instruments. The biggest challenge is to project percussion in a lyrical way.
Evelyn Glennie
If we see someone in a wheelchair, we assume they cannot walk. It may be that they can walk three, four, five steps. That, to them, means they can walk.
Evelyn Glennie
Music really is our daily medicine.
Evelyn Glennie
What I have to do as a musician is do everything that is not on the music.
Evelyn Glennie
It’s the things that you notice when you’re not actually with your instrument that, in fact, become so interesting, and that you – you want to explore, through this tiny tiny surface of a drum.
Evelyn Glennie
Hearing is a form of touch. You feel it through your body, and sometimes it almost hits your face.
Evelyn Glennie
And as I grew older, I then auditioned for the Royal Academy of Music in London, and they said, well, no, we won’t accept you, because we haven’t a clue – you know – of the future of a so-called ‘deaf’ musician. And I just couldn’t quite accept that.
Evelyn Glennie
The audience plays a huge part in how a piece will actually form. They really allow the performers to walk a tightrope in a way that never seems to happen in the privacy of your own four walls. I’m listening to the audience, and they’re listening to me.
Evelyn Glennie
The body’s like a huge ear. It’s as simple as that.
Evelyn Glennie
I like the sparkle of the vibraphone.
Evelyn Glennie
Marimba is much more of a wood-type experience and there is no real possibility of getting a dry sound, and getting that contrast in the same way that you can in a vibraphone.
Evelyn Glennie