Evelyn Glennie (b. 1965)
Filed under the name Evelyn · July 30, 2026
I coach a lot of kids who think one setback ends the whole game, so let me tell you about Evelyn Glennie. She's profoundly deaf, and she still became one of the world's leading solo percussionists — not despite the odds in some vague inspirational-poster way, but through an actual, specific, mastered skill, feeling the music through her body and the floor instead of her ears. I blew my knee out senior year of college and thought my whole athletic life was over in one afternoon; it took me a long time to understand that the thing you lose isn't always the thing that decides your story. Glennie didn't get to keep her hearing, and she built one of the great musical careers of our time anyway, and then turned around and became an advocate for other musicians with disabilities, which is the coaching instinct in me that respects most — using what you climbed through to make the climb shorter for somebody else. That's not a comeback story. That's just somebody who refused to accept the terms other people set for her, from day one.