Page 5 - SOUND... MUSIC1 -MODULE

It was her first day at the prestigious Royal Academy of Music in London
and daunting enough for any teenager fresh from a Scottish farm.

daunting: frightening, Scary
teenager: a person who is in his teens

Evelyn is seventeen years of age. She is a teenager and she is fresh from
a Scottish farm. As Evelyn is from Scotland which has more of farms and
country side, so, she has not seen fast life. That is why she is nervous and
the writer says that she is fresh from a Scottish farm.

But this aspiring musician faced a bigger challenge than most: she was
profoundly deaf.

aspiring musician: a person who wants to be a musician
Profoundly deaf: absolutely deaf.

Evelyn could not hear and this was a bigger challenge for her. Moving from
a rural area to a fast life was a smaller challenge. Evelyn faced a much
bigger challenge that was her inability to hear.

Evelyn Glennie‘s loss of hearing had been gradual.

gradual: in phases

Slowly, she started losing the power of hearing and one day she was
absolutely deaf.

Her mother remembers noticing something was wrong when the eight-
year-old Evelyn was waiting to play the piano. ―They called her name and
she didn‘t move. I suddenly realised she hadn‘t heard,‖ says Isabel
Glennie.

Isabel Glennie is the name of Evelyn‟s mother. Evelyn‟s mother Isabel
recollects one incident when Evelyn was eight years old. She says that
Evelyn was waiting for her turn to play the piano but when her name was
called out, she did not respond. And her mother realized that Evelyn did
not respond to her name that means she did not hear her name being
called out.