Home About Valerie French Disabled by Deafness? Program Samples Performance Schedule Contact Valerie Music samples |
Val Zamora can hear many sounds and has developed a sensitivity to help define what she hears. There are many sounds she can't hear, but she has learned to sense these, and to imagine their role in music. Sound and how our ears hear sound are complex issues. The biggest misconception Ms. Zamora comes across is that many people believe hearing comprehension is based on volume. No matter how loud some sounds are presented to some individuals, those sounds will still carry no comprehension value. This can be compared to certain types of color blindness, where red and green cannot be distinguished from each other no matter how close or bright they are presented. In addition, for some individuals, loud sounds are nothing short of painful. 
Ms. Zamora's ears shut down with almost any amount of loud sound. A loud practice room can close down her ears sometimes within minutes. Some sounds
she only hears loud. In their quietest production on the piano, she hears them above other sounds, but responds to the quality of tone and touch to define their volume level. For chamber music, she has developed a way to be an integral part of the group. She memorizes each part for each instrument, spends time with the players to get a feel for each one’s individual energy, their body language and their stylistic tendencies, and uses a kind of listening-by-deduction to stay unified with the ensemble. Ms. Zamora’s deafness wasn't diagnosed until she started school. She began lip reading classes and gradually discovered that her inability to understand the adults and the other children around her was not the confusion of every little child. Her hearing was different. It was unique. In social situations, Ms. Zamora is usually able to follow one to one conversations. As soon as company becomes three, she may catch a topic or a phrase here and there, but little more. She can also use the phone with her "speech" ear. That is, she can understand English spoken with well pronounced syllables and inflections within context if she and the caller are using quality telephones. If another language unfamiliar to Ms. Zamora is spoken on the phone, she can repeat the accent of the language - the inflections, the rhythms and the dynamics - but not distinguish the individual alphabet letters. Ms. Zamora has never taken the college first year theory course. In college and graduate school, she placed out of this ear training class by figuring out what the sounds on the aural placement exams must be, based upon the sounds she hears and a knowledge of music theory. Ear doctors have told her that she can never play the piano with her given hearing capacity. Fortunately for us, they are wrong. She continues to provide us with her exquisitely sensitive pianistic interpretations. |