It is difficult to imagine that there could be a more fascinating figure in the world of classical music than Evelyn Glennie. For starters, she is believed to be the first full-time, solo percussionist in the world.  Glennie's international concert schedule finds her performing over 120 concerts every year in more than twenty countries, spanning all five continents. She plays to sold-out audiences with the most celebrated orchestras and conductors in the world.

For her performances, Glennie draws from a personal collection of more than 700 percussion instruments from around the globe - so many, in fact, that she keeps large stables of instruments in North America and Japan, and two more sets in the United Kingdom just to keep from lugging them around. Her expanding repertoire numbers more than 2,000 works for solo percussion, many of them written exclusively for her by celebrated composers. One final extraordinary fact about this international sensation is that Evelyn Glennie is deaf.

Glennie began to lose her hearing as a child in Aberdeen, Scotland. Despite her eventual hearing loss, her family never discouraged her from pursuing her musical ambitions. Those ambitions led her to become a student at the Royal Academy of Music in London. Her miraculous success there broke down the sound barriers, proving in a profound way that hearing-impaired people can indeed participate in musical activity.

Today, Glennie has single-handedly brought the world of percussion in to the spotlight. Her pioneering achievements have shattered many misconceptions about music and hearing, and have changed the world of music forever.