Deafness not able to silence her music
“I’ve played the piano since I was 3 years old and the harp since I was 11. I teach and I love music.
“I was in my early 20s when I started losing my hearing. When you’re a professional musician with a hearing loss, it’s a stigma. So I hid it for a long time, and I learned to read lips very well. Nobody knew until I couldn’t hide it anymore.
“I was at a concert about three years ago, and I broke a string. I had to replace it over intermission. I usually rely on an electronic tuner. But because there were so many people around me also tuning, I couldn’t hear well enough. I asked a violinist friend to help me hear to tune it.
“Then in rehearsals, I couldn’t hear our conductor. I began missing cues. I was completely lost. I had played with several community orchestras. But at this point I had gone back to school and didn’t have as much time. So I pared way down and just played gigs and with Baytown Symphony. Finally, I went to the conductor and said, ‘I can’t do this anymore because I’m deaf. I’m legally deaf. I love this orchestra, but you’d do better with somebody else.’
“At first, there was a process of getting people to believe me. I hadn’t told anybody. I had hid it so well.
“Music is in a different range than speech. It’s still a range that I can hear. There are certain things on the harp that I can’t hear. But I can absolutely hear the piano. I still play weddings and stuff like that. It doesn’t affect that work because it’s just me playing. As long as I play the right notes, I’m good. But playing with an ensemble, I just can’t do. I’ve kept my piano students. But I had to stop teaching voice because I couldn’t hear my students.
“My hearing loss has been gradual over 20 years. I speak ASL and I read lips. So I live inside the deaf community as well, and I’m at peace with that. It’s helped shape the kind of ministry I’d like.
“I hope to become a priest with the deaf community for the Episcopal Diocese of Texas. We don’t have a deaf ministry, so I hope to bridge that gap. It’s God’s redirection for me. I can’t do everything that I used to do. But I still have vital things to offer the world. I feel like this is the way I can do that.”
— Amy Waltz-Reasonover
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