And as I grew older, I then auditioned for the Royal Academy of Music in London, and they said, well, no, we won’t accept you, because we haven’t a clue - you know - of the future of a so-called ’deaf’ musician. And I just couldn’t quite accept that.

Evelyn Glennie is recalling a pivotal moment in her training as a young percussionist after she had already begun to lose her hearing. In interviews about her early career, she describes applying to audition for the Royal Academy of Music in London and encountering institutional skepticism about whether a “deaf” musician could have a viable future. The remark comes as part of her broader narrative of persistence: rather than accepting the gatekeeping judgment, she continued to pursue formal study and a professional path, later becoming internationally known for reframing “hearing” as a whole-body, tactile form of listening.

In this recollection, Glennie describes an early institutional barrier: a prestigious conservatoire framing her deafness as an unknowable professional risk rather than a difference to be accommodated. The quote captures a common dynamic in disability history—gatekeeping justified by “uncertainty” about viability—set against an individual’s refusal to internalize that verdict. Her emphasis on not being able to “accept that” signals both personal resolve and a critique of the assumptions embedded in elite training systems. Read in light of her later career, the moment functions as an origin story for her advocacy: redefining musicianship beyond conventional hearing norms and insisting that artistic potential cannot be predicted by medicalized labels.