Discography: 1980s & 1990s

The world’s most innovative instrumentalist adds a new dimension to her vast collection of recorded repertoire. Glennie is considered the world’s greatest percussionist. In this recording she performs a wide array of xylophone repertoire from the era when this instrument was king, accompanied by the world’s greatest brass band.

Hamilton-Green/Graham: Triplets
Various: Xylophone Classics
Barnes/Graham: Yorkshire Ballad
Starita/Graham: Rudy’s Rambles
Green/Graham: The Whirlwind
Traditional/Glennie: Londonderry Air (Danny Boy)
Brenska/Graham: Taps in Tempo
Geldard/Graham: Tween Heather and Sea
Finkel/Graham: The Gypsy Vituoso
Various: The Golden Age of the Xylophone
Satie/Graham: Gymnopédie No 1
Brooke/Graham: Gee Whizz!
Hohne/Graham: Slavische Fantasie
Graham: Cartoon Music
Hackford/Graham: Hittin’ Em Up

Xylophone, Marimba & Vibraphone: Evelyn Glennie
Conductor: James Watson
Black Dyke Band

This disc is the result of a fascinating collaboration between two of the UK’s most celebrated classical phenomena: Evelyn Glennie and the King’s Singers. Combining works for voice along, percussion alone and the union of the two, we’re catapulted into a world of colour and melodic intricacy rarely experienced and rarely found. This is your chance to hear what happens when the expressiveness of the human voice meets the (very different) expressiveness of percussion.

Martland: Street Songs
Klatzow: Return of the Moon
Dijk: Horizons
Horne: Reaching Out
Glasser: Lalela Zulu
Glasser: Lalela Zulu – Mambabo!
Glasser: Lalela Zulu – Lala MNtwana
Glasser: Lalela Zulu – Uhambo Ngesitimela
Glasser: Lalela Zulu – E-goli
Glasser: Lalela Zulu –  Umdanso Wasegoli
Glennie: Giles

Percussion: Evelyn Glennie
Voices: King’s Singers

Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/album/4w8HiaCqyeYUBfulaDaoi2
Unavailable on Amazon Music.
Listen on Apple Music: https://music.apple.com/gb/album/street-songs/380137524

A double album containing 30 tracks and over two hours of music, surveying the breadth of Evelyn’s recording career. The album also contains Oxygen, a previously unreleased collaboration with Björk.

Glennie: Entrances
Cauberghs: Halasana
Glennie: Sorbet No 1 – Latin American Interlude
Smadbeck: Rhythm Song
Björk/Glennie: My Spine
Rogers: Slaughter on 10th Avenue
Glennie: Sorbet No 2 – Wood & Metal Chimes
Glennie: A Little Prayer
Rosauro: Eldorado (Cenas Amerinadas No 2)
Sorbet No 7 – Hi-Hat Playout
Chopin/Palmer/Glennie: Black Key Study
Akira Yuyama: Divertimento for Marimba & Alto Saxophone
Berenska: Taps in Tempo
Mars Bonfire/Lang: Born to be Wild
Keiko Abe/Glennie: Michi
Glennie: Sorbet No 4 – Woodblocks & Falling Instruments
Glennie: Light in Darkness
Lang: Anvil Chorus
Takayoshi Yoshioka: Rhapsody
Saint-Saëns/Langford: The Swan (from Carnival of the Animals)
Glennie: Sorbet No 3 – UDU Trail
Rodney Bennett: Concerto for Solo Percussion and Chamber Orchestra (Movement III)
Rimsky-Korsakov/Palmer: The Flight of the Bumble Bee
Sorbet No 6 – Simtak Debut
Minoru Miki – Marimba Spritual
Hubey/Glennie: Hejre Kati
Joplin/Russell: Maple Leaf Rag
Psathas: Matre’s Dance
Monti/Palmer/Glennie: Czardas
Björk/Glennie: Oxygen

Solo Percussion: Evelyn Glennie
Piano: Philip Smith
Vocals: Björk
Saxophone: John Harle
Additional Percussion: Stephen Henderson, Gary Kettel & Greg Knowles
Flute: Edward Beckett
Clarinet: Roy Jowitt
Double Bass: Chris Lawrence
Drum Kit: Ralph Slamins
Conductors: Paul Daniel, Ray Russell & Barry Wordsworth
National Philharmonic Orchestra
Scottish Chamber Orchestra

Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/album/2dkVQ3a4b5qACFsjw3zUmh?autoplay=true
Unavailable on Amazon Music.
Unavailable on Apple Music.

Schwantner’s percussion concerto has an anniversary and a memorial context. The New York Philharmonic commissioned the work in celebration of its 150th anniversary. At the time he was profoundly saddened by the death of fellow composer Stephen Albert, who had a strong connection with the National Symphony Orchestra, who appears on this recording. The soloist is required to command 20 different instruments across three movements. Velocities, meanwhile, which Schwantner describes as a moto perpetuo for solo marimba, focusses the performer’s efforts on one instrument. The result is no less kaleidoscopic!

Schwantner: Velocities
Schwantner: Concerto for Percussion and Orchestra
Schwantner: New Morning for the World: “Daybreak of Freedom”

Solo Percussion: Evelyn Glennie
Conductor: Leonard Slatkin
National Symphony Orchestra

Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/album/4ufmFwqPLKomW0Ef4RVTKG
Listen on Amazon Music: https://music.amazon.co.uk/albums/B0029ZHTTY
Listen on Apple Music: https://music.apple.com/gb/album/schwandtner-concerto-for-percussion-orchestra-new-morning/404870143

A collection of pieces for solo percussion and percussion with piano sit alongside improvisation on this best-selling CD. Covering a cross-section of repertoire and showcasing many different ways of approaching percussion, this recording displays Evelyn Glennie’s talents at their very best and their most focussed. A riveting, exhilarating joy to hear and a world away from your average CD.

Glennie: Entrances
Cauberghs: Halasana
Glennie: Sorbet No 1 – Latin American Interlude
Sierra: Bongo-O
Glennie: Sorbet No 2 – Chinese Cymbals
Masson: Prim
Glennie: Sorbet No 3 – UDU Trail
Lang: Anvil Chorus
Glennie: Sorbet No 4 – Woodblocks and Falling Instruments
Rzewski: To the Earth
Glennie: Sorbet No 5 – Metal Wind Chimes
Živković: Pezzo da Concerto No 1, Op 15
Glennie: Sorbet No 6 – Simtak Debut
Psathas: Matre’s Dance
Glennie: Exits
Glennie: Hi-Hat Playout

Percussion: Evelyn Glennie
Piano: Philip Smith

In a very short space of time, Evelyn Glennie has established herself as a consummate musician. She is believed to be the first full-time solo percussionist in the world. Her outstanding international career has brought into the musically rarified atmosphere of the classical concert hall an audience whose tastes range from the esoteric avant-garde to the immediately accessible.

Wind in the Bamboo Grove stands as a tribute to that success, bringing some of the best music from the Far East to the ears of Western audiences. Joined by a host of other fine musicians, Evelyn takes us through the soundworld of her marimba teacher, Keiko Abe, and the captivating vistas of other composers.

Keiko Abe: Michi
Akira Yuyama: Divertimento
Keiko Abe: Wind in the Bamboo Grove
Takayoshi Yoshioka: Rhapsody
Keiko Abe: Variations on Japanese Children’s Songs
Minoru Miki: Marimba Spiritual

Solo Percussion: Evelyn Glennie
Saxophone: John Harle
Flute: Edward Beckett
Clarinet: Roy Jowitt
Double Bass: Chris Lawrence
Drum Kit: Ralph Slamins
Additional Percussion: Stephen Henderson, Gary Kettel & Greg Knowles

In 1994 Britain celebrated the hundredth season of the best-loved of all its musical institutions, ‘The Proms’. The hundredth season’s concluding the concert – ‘The Last Night of the Proms’ – was conceived as a tribute to Proms founder Sir Henry Wood. The programme included Wood’s own arrangement of Bach’s famed Toccata and fugue in D Minor as well as perennial Proms favourite, his Fantasia on British Sea Songs. Wood was a great champion of new music and novelties, which led to the inclusion of Miki’s Marimba Spiritual, performed by Evelyn Glennie who gave the first ever performance of a percussion concerto at The Proms.

Bach/Wood: Toccata and Fugue in D Minor
Walton: Belshazzar’s Feast
Minoru Miki: Marimba Spiritual
Massenet: Méditation from Thaïs
Elgar: Pomp and Circumstance March No 1
Wood: Fantasia on British Sea Songs
Arne/Sargent: Rule Britannia!
Parry/Elgar: Jerusalem

Marimba: Evelyn Glennie
Baritone: Bryn Terfel
Conductor: Andrew Davis
BBC Singers
BBC Symphony Chorus
BBC Symphony Orchestra

James Macmillan’s first concerto for percussion and orchestra, Veni, Veni, Emmanuel, was written especially for Evelyn, who gave the première in 1992 and has has performed the work many times since. One of the most popular concertos of modern times, Macmillan’s work is cast in a single movement and dedicated, touchingly, to his parents. Macmillan has based the music on the Advent plainsong with which the piece shares a name. Indeed, composition begun on the first Sunday of Advent in 1991 and concluded on Easter Sunday 1992. At the very end of the piece the music takes a corresponding liturgical detour, deriving its ideas from the Gloria of the Easter Vigil. On one level the concerto is purely abstract. On another level it explores the theology behind the Advent message.

Macmillan: Veni, Veni, Emmanuel
Macmillan: After the Tryst
Macmillan: …As Others See Us…
Macmillan: Three Dawn Rituals
Macmillan: Untold

Solo Percussion: Evelyn Glennie
Violin: Ruth Crouch
Piano: James Macmillan
Conductors: Jukka-Pekka Saraste & James Macmillan
Scottish Chamber Orchestra

For centuries, the touring virtuoso displaying outstanding skill on a particular instrument has been a central feature of concert hall entertainment. Newcomers offer not only fine music, but also the attraction of hearing comparatively unusual instruments brought to the fore. Percussion virtuosi are among the latest to join the ranks of concertizing soloists and, among them, Evelyn Glennie blazes an unforgtable trail.

Rebounds presents a selection of fine percussion concertos from the 1930s right up to the 1990s. Infectious rhythms from jazz and traditional Brazilian music permeate this unforgettable album.

Milhaud: Concerto for Percussion and Small Orchestra
Rodney-Bennett: Concerto for Solo Percussion and Chamber Orchestra
Ney Roasauro: Concerto for Marimba and String Orchestra
Akira Miyoshi: Concerto for Marimba and String Orchestra

Solo Percussion: Evelyn Glennie
Conductor: Paul Daniel
Scottish Chamber Orchestra

Dance is emotion expressed in movement. This album presents a mosaic of music – sounds as emotions – that has been created, or chosen by dancers, for Dancin’.

1. Slaughter on 10th Avenue
2. Clog Dance
3. Polkas by the Beautiful Blue Danube
4. The Swan
5. Ginger and Fred
6. Can-Can
7. Bolero
8. Hoe-Down from Rodeo
9. Invitation to the Dance
10. Hejre Kati
11. Valse Brilliante
12. Taps in Tempo

Solo Percussion: Evelyn Glennie
Conductor: Barry Wordsworth
National Philharmonic Orchestra

All tracks orchestrated by Gordon Langford

*Arranged by Gordon Langford

Evelyn’s second solo album features a music by composers from the East and West, demonstrating Evelyn’s early commitment to music from around the world. This is also the first album to feature Philip Smith, who would come to be a long-term collaborator on many projects.

Ney Rosauro: Eldorado (from Cenas Amerindias)
Keiko Abe: Dream of the Cherry Blossoms
McLeod: The Song of Dionysius
Edwards: Marimba Dances
Minoru Miki: Marimba Spiritual
Glennie: Light in Darkness
Toshimitsu Tanaka: Two Movements for Marimba

Solo Percussion: Evelyn Glennie
Additional Percussion: Steve Henderson, Gregory Knowles & Gary Kettel
Piano: Philip Smith

Evelyn’s first solo album, Rhythm Song, presents something of a cross-section of the wide variety of musical styles she embraces on tuned percussion instruments. With lively, entertaining works and deeply serious ones side-by-side, this disc takes us on an journey through the expressive world of percussion playing and top-level music-making. The whole album becomes an extended rhythm song, a broad canvas of emotions in sound – and what better description could there be of true music?

Musser/Palmer: Etude in C, Op. 6, No 10
Inns/Russell: Robbin’ Harry
Smadbeck: Rhythm Song
Fauré/Palmer: Berceuse
Rimsky-Kosakov/Palmer: The Flight of the Bumble Bee
Monti/Palmer/Glennie: Czardas
Stout: Mexican Dances for Marimba (Nos 1 & 2)
Joplin/Russell: Maple Leaf Rag
Glennie: A Little Prayer
Chopin/Palmer/Glennie: Black Key Study
Keiko Abe/Glennie: Michi
Saint-Saëns/Glennie: Introduction & Rondo Capriccioso

Solo Percussion: Evelyn Glennie
Conductors: Barry Wordsworth & Ray Russell
National Philharmonic Orchestra

This award-winning disc of Bartók’s celebrated work and Brahms’s pianistic classic was recorded at the beginning of Evelyn’s career. See the masters at work: two titans of the piano world and the percussion wunderkind in all her youthful exuberance.

Bartók: Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion
Brahms: Haydn Variations for Two Pianos

Percussion: Evelyn Glennie & David Corkhill
Pianos: Sir Georg Solti & Murray Perahia

Best Chamber Music Performance: 31st Annual GRAMMY Awards