Honorary Graduates
Orations and responses
Evelyn Elizabeth Ann Glennie, OBE
Oration given on 10 July 1998
Chancellor: The Senate of the University has resolved
that the degree of Doctor of the University be conferred on Evelyn
Glennie.
One of the real achievements of modern Britain is the steady flow of
remarkably gifted young musicians (including, of course, singers) who have
pushed up the standards which concert audiences now expect - and all too easily
may take for granted. Music degrees are part of our curriculum here at the
University of Essex, in partnership with the eminent Department of Music at the
Colchester Institute.
We are delighted by our contribution to music education and its spill-over
into our other established teaching fields, for example, literature and
mathematics. Today’s award of an honorary doctorate to a very
distinguished young Scottish musician expresses this delight.
Evelyn Glennie - as just about everyone present who lives in Britain will
know - is a percussionist: in fact she is believed to be the world’s first
full-time percussion soloist. Jazz and swing soloists, such as Lionel Hampton on
vibraphone or Eric Delaney on timpani, had their own group or full band.
She does not, however, simply stand behind just one xylophone, marimba or
vibraphone or one set of timpani, side or snare drums, cymbals, tubular bells,
cup bells, musical wooden blocks or even a solitary inoffensive triangle,
waiting her cue to hit it. Instead she surrounds herself with an array of
these percussion instruments and then attacks all of them, like a one-woman
commando force. The result is an aural feast of sharp, sweet rhythms such
as her audiences will never have heard before, unless, that is, they have heard
Evelyn Glennie before.
She was born on a farm near Aberdeen and started out on the piano (reaching
Grade 8 with a Distinction) and the clarinet, before turning to timpani and
other instruments at twelve. She was fascinated by the sheer variety of
percussion: overall some six hundred or more instruments or devices, she
reckons, world-wide, which can (as she has written) be “struck, shaken, rattled
or squeezed” to musical effect.
At the Royal Academy of Music in London, she was a dazzling star, despite her
very unusual choice of instruments for any would-be soloist. She received
the Academy’s highest award: the Queen’s Commendation Prize for
all-round excellence. Her debut at London’s Wigmore Hall followed two
years later. She gave the first BBC Promenade Concert to consist of a solo
percussion recital, (one week after her twenty-fourth birthday). Clearly,
if so young a performer could fill a large hall for such an unusual concert,
then here was a remarkable musical and personal phenomenon. Indeed, that
very term was used by the New York Times critic of her concert with the New York
Philharmonic just over two years ago. She is, he wrote, “quite simply a
phenomenon”.
Why this dramatic effect on her audiences? One account, by the critic
Fiona Maddocks, of a recent percussion master class and concert which Evelyn
Glennie contributed to the Huddersfield contemporary music festival this last
December, helps to explain it. She believes that the Glennie blend of
musical traditions - classical and modernist, classical and jazz or folk,
Western and Eastern - succeeds because of this great musician’s commitment, as
well as her skills. She sees a combination of what she calls “obsessive
commitment and glamour”: - together, these make up Evelyn Glennie’s “gift to
communicate difficult music”.
In the exactly nine years since her remarkable ‘first percussion BBC
Promenade Concert’, she has toured the world as a soloist, bringing a wide array
of different instruments to generally rather traditional concert hall audiences.
The lists of American orchestra halls, British touring venues and European music
festivals which have heard her play are all very long. So is the list of
eminent conductors in support, including Rostropovich, Leonard Slatkin and the
late Sir George Solti. She recorded a xylophone solo from a concerto by
Bela Bartok in the Snape Maltings with the irrepressible Solti - (all day,
without a break). She found his famous energy and enthusiasm highly
attractive: indeed - they are similar, professionally and perhaps
personally.
Her international success has been as great as any other young musical star’s
but much broader. She has composed and adapted new percussion repertoire
from the musical traditions of Asia and Latin America, combined with music for
British TV dramas (notably the Prime Suspect series starring Helen Mirren) and
TV commercials - all showing her truly universal musical sympathy.
She was made an OBE five years ago for her services to music. In that
same year she married Greg Malcangi who also composes, using a computer.
We are very pleased indeed to welcome him here today.
By happy coincidence, Evelyn Glennie’s regular recital accompanist is the
fine Colchester-born pianist, Philip Smith. He describes her as a “dynamo”
but with a love of fun thrown in. Her focused concentration is
exceptional, even by the exacting standards of international musical soloists.
But this does not entail the prima donna’s demand for special status or
attention. Instead, what he calls “a bubbling good humour” makes light of
the exacting work. The humour is mildly subversive: concert
promoters or orchestra managers may feel their legs being pulled. When
it’s time to go back on stage after the concert interval, she and Philip have
been known to hide in a cupboard and then come bursting out, rather late, just
as the stage manager thinks they must have gone home.
The University is very pleased today to honour a young star performer,
composer and ambassador of all the world’s music. In time, she will surely
grow from a phenomenon into an institution. But she will keep her fresh
enthusiasm and sense of fun, we may be sure.
Chancellor, I present to you Evelyn Elizabeth Ann Glennie.