Do you remember Andrea Bocelli? If you don't you're probably fairly young because if you shopped music stores in the mid to late '90s it would've been pretty hard to ignore his presence. He's an Italian tenor that rode the tenor craze that began with the Three Tenors (Plácido Domingo, José Carreras, and Luciano Pavarotti) during the renaissance of cl@ssical music interest that surged due to the popularity of the compact disc format. Although he did have his champions and adoring fans, Bocelli was never fully accepted as a quality tenor in the world of opera and mainly excelled at singing traditional Italian songs in an operatic manner. But despite the nagging of the critical world, Bocelli was insanely popular and eventually sold over 70 million albums and broke world records in terms of sales and popularity. What made him so popular that he regularly outsold his more respected competition?

One of his big selling points was that Bocelli was born with very poor eyesight and due to an injury suffered when he was 12 he became totally blind. But Bocelli was exceedingly intelligent, very musical gifted and despite this setback he marshaled on to compete in singing competitions and began winning them one after another eventually garnering him quite a bit of attention. Although bringing up the fact that he was blind as a selling point might seem a tad crass, trust me it was and it would be foolish for anybody to think that it didn't add to the narrative of his popularity...because brother it did. You know how I know...besides all the advertising pointing this fact out of course. It's because during his rise in popularity I either worked at, helped to run, or flat out ran a music store or department -- and not some little side effort mind you, but a department that did 40% of the business of a $7 million a year store. Anyhoo...pretty much every day, and sometimes multiple times a day, a little old lady would come in asking for one of Bocelli's albums and each and every time those little old ladies would end the conversation with the same statements. "Isn't he great? He's blind you know!" which though impressive and something which definitely added an extra hurdle to Bocelli's climb to success, it's not something you would think was that impossible to imagine for a human to achieve.

Then my mind would drift to somebody in the cl@ssical world that climbed to success around the same time whose struggle truly did impress me. The person who this blog is really about after that exceedingly long preamble. A Scottish percussionist by the name of Dame Evelyn Glennie.

Here is a common entry for the biography of Miss Evelyn Glennie that you can find at many a music site:

"Evelyn is the first person in musical history to successfully create and sustain a full-time career as a solo percussionist. As one of the most eclectic and innovative musicians on the scene today she is constantly redefining the goals and expectations of percussion. By combining superb technique, a profound appreciation of the visual and her astonishing musicality, Evelyn creates performances of such vitality that they almost constitute a new type of performance.

Evelyn gives more than 100 performances a year worldwide, performing with the greatest conductors, orchestras, and artists. For the first ten years of her career virtually every performance she gave was in some way a first - the first time an orchestra had performed with a percussion soloist, the first solo percussion performance at a venue or festival or the world premiere of a new piece. Her diversity of collaborations have included performances with artists such as Nana Vasconcelos, Kodo, Bela Fleck, Bjork, Bobby McFerrin, Emmanuel Ax, Sting, Kings Singers, Mormon Tabernacle Choir and Fred Frith.

Evelyn has commissioned one hundred and fifty new works for solo percussion from many of the world's most eminent composers and also composes and records music for film and television. Her first high quality drama produced a score so original she was nominated for a British Academy of Film and Television Arts awards (BAFTA's); the UK equivalent of the Oscars.

Evelyn's recording career has been as illustrious as her performing and composing career. Evelyn's first CD, a recording of Bartok's Sonata for two Pianos and Percussion, won her a Grammy in 1988. A further two Grammy nominations followed, one of which she won in 2002 for a collaboration with Bela Fleck for Sony cl@ssical. Evelyn's twelfth solo CD, Shadow Behind the Iron Sun (BMG Records), was based on a radical concept and has once again questioned people's expectations. Despite working a relentless schedule Evelyn is in constant demand to release new recordings, twenty five so far.

Outside of actual performance the Evelyn Glennie brand is constantly exploring other areas of creativity. From writing a best selling autobiography, Good Vibrations, to collaborating with the renowned film director Thomas Riedelsheimer on a film called Touch the Sound, to presenting two series of her own television programmes (Soundbites) for the BBC, to regularly appearing on television across the world, which include The David Letterman Show (USA), Sesame Street (USA), The South Bank Show (UK), presenting and performing on Songs of Praise (UK), Commonwealth Games Festival Concert, This is Your Life (UK), 60 minutes (USA), PBS Profile (USA) and many more.

Evelyn's activities also include lobbying the Government on political issues, her consortium with Sir James Gallway, Julian Lloyd Webber and the late Michael Kamen successfully led to the government providing 332 million pounds towards music eduction. Other aspects include Evelyn Glennie Images which supplies photographs from a vast image library of Evelyn, Evelyn Glennie Jewellery, which is a range of Jewellery designed in conjunction with Ortak and based on her influences as a solo percussionist and Evelyn Glennie Merchandise. Evelyn is also an international motivational speaker to many diverse corporate companies and events. Evelyn also performs with Orchestras on the Great Highland Bagpipes.

After 20 years in the music business she has begun teaching privately, which allows her to explore the art of teaching and to explore the world of sound therapy as a means of communication.

In 1993 Evelyn was awarded the OBE (Officer of the British Empire). This was extended in 2007 to 'Dame Commander' for her services to music and to date has received over 80 international awards. She is brimming with ideas to improve the experience for the audience and continues to redefine the very format of live performance itself."

So if you bothered to read that I suppose you're probably reasonably impressed. But you might be wondering just why is it then that, other than perhaps a personal preference for percussion over operatic singing, just why is it I'm so much more impressed with Miss Glennie's achievements over Bocelli's? What that biography doesn't mention is the fact that similar to Bocelli Evelyn was born with a problem. You see her hearing wasn't so good and it diminished year by year so that by the same age that Bocelli went completely blind, at age 12 Evelyn became profoundly deaf. You read that right. One of the best and most highly respected percussionists in the world is deaf.

Despite her ever diminishing hearing Evelyn slowly began to notice that every tiny vibration that her percussive instruments made resonated and vibrated in different parts of her body depending upon the various pitches of the waves. Noting all these differences she became so attuned to all their differing wavelengths that she could tell the exact pitch of every note of music by how and where it resonated in her body to the point that even if she doesn't look at the drums she is striking she can feel exactly what she's playing to such an amazing degree of accuracy that along with her amazing playing level skill she has become...well all those things you read about above.

Evelyn Glennie doing her favorite thing. Playing the hell out of snare drum.

Unfortunately Miss Glennie often delves into somewhat formless sound projects that I'm not a keen fan of and so over the years I've sort of drifted away from her world. Recently on HuluPlus I ran across a little quasi-documentary called Touch the Sound which follows her wandering around the world playing with folks and unfortunately (for me anyways) a little too much of that aforementioned sound noodling. But one aspect of it was highly interesting to me as it documented a brief session in which Glennie was teaching a young deaf girl how their deafness can make them better percussionists than people with full hearing. It's really quite amazing to watch her face light up as she realizes that music is not really all that gone from her world of dominating silence.

So yeah...Bocelli was pretty neat and gosh was he popular. But you know who really impresses me...?

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