From THE RECORD, Quebec, Canada
November 14-November 20, 2003
MUSIC
Pianist connects with her audience
By Leah Fitzgerald
RECORD CORRESPONDENT
Valorie Zamora is no good in a crowd. That is, unless she’s
playing piano for them.
Zamora is, for all intensive purposes, deaf. She can hear enough
to have one-on-one conversations, and can even use the telephone, if the line
is clear. Doctors told her, though, she couldn’t play the piano.
“It’s a crime to tell someone they can’t do something,” she
says. “Very few scientists aren’t aware the world is full of miracles.”
Zamora is very aware of the world of science -- she had planned to
study medicine, and still reads science magazines voraciously. Her first
love is still the piano.
“I don’t remember not being able to play ‘book one.’ ” she
explains. “Since I was little, this is always what I wanted to do.”
Zamora’s hearing loss was likely caused by a high fever when she
was a baby. However, she didn’t know she was deaf until she started school
and a teacher caught on that the bright student in her class wasn’t just not
paying attention.
English was her parents’ second language and they both spoke slowly
and clearly. They never made the connection between her slower, sometimes
mispronounced speech and her hearing. Their patience taught Zamora to speak
clearly and easily.
“There are people in the field who support children being
mainstreamed,” Zamora said, of teaching deaf children to cope. “Sometimes
you’re better off just thrown in the deep end.”
Zamora always went to a regular school in a regular classroom. She
often hated school.
“I was bored to death, “ she says. “Some teachers were great.
They spoke clearly and I sat in front. If they mumbled, well, I learned to
be with my imagination. I created music pieces, watched the clock.”
Despite disliking school, she continued on into university as a pre-
med student. She decided to take an elective music course, which she had to
audition for.
“After the audition, the professor took me aside and said, “I’d
like to talk to you.’ ”
That professor encouraged Zamora to pursue music as a career. Of
course, he had no idea she was deaf.
“I hid my disability at all costs,” Zamora says. “People just
thought I was a space cadet. They’d call my name and I just didn’t hear
them.”
Zamora ended up in graduate school, and then taught piano full time
at the University of North Carolina. A colleague pushed her to pursue a PhD.
“I did the brave thing. I quit,” she says. “It seems like a
shame, but I’m doing what I want now.”
It wasn’t until three years ago that Zamora started touring as a
deaf pianist.
“I never wanted to be a novelty act, you know?” she says. “I loved
to teach, but you can only reach a handful of people. With performing, it’s
huge numbers.”
Zamora says performing as a deaf pianist helps change people’s
perception of what it means to be “differently-abled.”
“I gave a concert, and there was a blind woman in the audience.
After, she said, ‘You know, I always thought I could see. After hearing you
play, I know I can.’ ”
Zamora’s hearing relies on her sensitivity to the other things
going on around her, including the sound vibrations she can feel.
What I hear isn’t everything you can hear,” she explains. “I have
to be really acute, and use my judgment to figure out what I’ve missed. For
me, sound is motion, gravity, colour, expression, sense of smell and touch
combined.”
Zamora can play with accompaniment by memorizing the other pieces.
She plays along to the sounds in her memory since the actual accompaniment is
too loud for her to hear. She has the same problem at dinner parties.
“I’m great talking just to one person,” she says. “Put me in a
crowd and I’m lost. I can’t follow anything.”
The conference Zamora is giving at Centennial will be less about
her hearing, and more about a famous composer who was also deaf.
“I think it makes me a little qualified to talk about how Beethoven
composed, not that I hear like him,’ she laughs. “I’ll be talking about how
he could compose what he was hearing in his head.”
Zamora will also play some piano pieces as examples and talk a
little about her own struggles.
“It’s an honour to be part of a meeting to explain how I do it, or
to perform for an audience so they can see it.”
VALERIE ZAMORA APPEARS AT CENTENNIAL THEATRE ON WEDNESDAY, NOV. 19 AT 8 P.M. TICKETS ARE $12, $6 FOR STUDENTS, AND ARE AVAILABLE BY CALLING THE BOX OFFICE AT 819-8291.
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