Greatest Hits
An industrial park on the outskirts of Cambridge is an unexpected base for the world’s leading solo percussionist. However, when your instrument collection comprises some 2,000 items, practicalities prevail. Over three decades, Evelyn Glennie has amassed a diverse range of percussive paraphernalia, from triangles to tamtams, tambourines to timpani. She’s also commissioned an entire body of repertoire: over 200 pieces, concertos included.
The scores and correspondence associated with these works are also held at Glennie HQ, where a small team is busy cataloguing the archive. Yet the first item that greets visitors is not a piece of percussion at all; it’s a shiny MV Agusta F4 motorbike – Glennie has held a motorcycle licence since 2001. It’s a reminder that this is a not a museum, but a working office, a usable storage space and a testament to a fast-moving, ceiling-smashing career.
‘EVER SINCE MY FIRST pair of drumsticks I knew I’d be a collector,’ says Glennie as we enter an Aladdin’s Cave of glockenspiels, handbells and wood blocks. ‘This piece was made for the Tan Dun Water Percussion Concerto,’ she explains, selecting a dark purple two-piece from a rack of neatly hung stage outfits. It is the outfit she wore for the 2004 BBC Proms performance of the experimental work that requires the soloist to ‘play’ basins filled with water. ‘In the past, the soloists were men and they wore the usual
