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Evelyn Glennie is a British musician and composer.

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Evelyn was born in Aberdeen in Scotland.

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From the age of eight, she started to lose her hearing

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and she's been profoundly deaf since the age of 12.

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Evelyn was learning the piano, but at 12,

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she decided she wanted to take up percussion,

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the first step in her journey to becoming the world's premier

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solo percussionist? Well to be a solo percussionist of course you need repertoire to play and there

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was very little repertoire for solo percussion so my main focus had to be targeting the composers

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and asking them to write pieces of music otherwise there was not enough repertoire to sustain the

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career of a solo percussionist and so that really was my main task but I think a lot of people

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couldn't quite visualize what a solo percussionist could be so to bring

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percussion from the back of the orchestra to the front of the orchestra

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that took a little while for people to really think about and to visualize but

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for me it was very very clear in my mind but getting the repertoire was

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absolutely key with this in mind Evelyn has commissioned over 200 new works for

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solo percussion. She performs these and other older works across the world, either solo

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or with other musicians and orchestras. She often performs barefoot in order to feel the

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music better. Although her training was in classical music, Evelyn has also collaborated

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with a diverse range of other musicians, including the Icelandic singer Bjork and the British

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rock guitarist Mark Knopfler. Throughout her career, Evelyn has collected percussion

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instruments from various countries and cultures, and some from closer to home, like this thunder

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sheet that Evelyn picked up from a nearby building site. In fact, she has so many that

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she can't store them all in her home studio.

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Well, my collection of percussion instruments is around 2,000, bearing in mind that many

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those instruments are quite small so they can be handheld and then of course we have much larger

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instruments such as the marimba the vibraphone timpani drum kit gamelan lots of different things

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like that and each instrument is unique it's almost like asking what is your favorite child

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and that's impossible you know so each instrument has a story um you know each instrument just has

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its own unique sound world and really, again, whichever instrument is in front of me, that's

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my favourite.

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These instruments are not for show. Evelyn plays all the instruments in her collection

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and has recorded over 30 albums. She also composes music for percussion herself, both

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for classical performance and for the theatre for film and tv and for advertising

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i do compose music and most of my compositions are related to media purposes so for films for

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radio television and so on and that aspect i really love because i can use a lot of the more

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unusual instruments in my collection and the thing about writing to what is mainly a picture so it

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could be that you're writing for a a detective drama series or a car advert or a milk advert

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or something is that you have that visual aid and it can just be a sound a mood that you're creating

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that will make the difference in what you see

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and ultimately how engaged you become

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with that drama or advert or product.

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So it's a really different type of composition

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as opposed to writing for the concert platform.

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So I very much enjoy that with the types of tools

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that I have at my disposal.

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Given the number of instruments she owns

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and the variety of instruments and things she plays,

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what instrument would she recommend to a beginner?

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To advise someone as to which instrument would be good to start with,

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I think it depends on many aspects.

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The space they have, whether they're close to neighbours and so on.

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And obviously I'm referring to percussion.

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But I think it's important to find an instrument

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whereby all four limbs, your two arms, two legs, can participate in

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so that the body is completely balanced.