A big deal!

I hardly know where to begin to tell you about this very important music presentation I did yesterday in DC at the American Academy of Otolaryngology's  National conference.  They found out about me from the article I had published in the March in  The Hearing Journal. The article is an in depth look at the aural rehab I did with a music teacher after the activation of my cochlear implant (CI) to regain music perception. Many CI recipients talk about the difficulty in pitch perception in music and the work I did with a music teacher helped me to retrain my brain and CI for this. (see link above for the Hearing Journal article)

So yesterday it was quite an honor to play for thousands of people all over the world on the biggest stage I've ever stepped upon.  I began the ceremony by playing instrumental guitar music (many of my own originals) as audience members were being seated. After this segment,  as I walked backstage, they played music from my CD, "Choose the Sky". It was an amazing feeling to hear my own songs being piped into a National conference.

I then waited backstage while others from the organization made their remarks and welcomes. Then my name was called and as I walked up the stage, my song, "How will I know" was playing over the intercom. I will never forget this feeling of joy walking up to the podium and the bright lights blinding me as I stood there to speak.

My speech was of my story of how otolaryngology transformed my life.  Because of my CI surgery,  my dream of becoming a professional musician has come true.  As I stated in my speech, I never felt my hearing loss interfered with my music but it created a lot of obstacles in communicating with others. How could I book gigs if I could not hear over the phone? How could I converse with venue owners on my breaks at a gig? How could i explain that I can hear well enough to perform but I could not hear enough to represent myself.

As you all know now.. because of my CI procedure, it has given me my hearing back. Not that it was a "magic wand" though and what I mean by that is --I did have to do a lot of work to regain my hearing in addition to the surgery. It is not like a "plug and play" situation like a hearing aid.  Others who know of CI recipients understand this.

So anyway.. I said my speech without having to look at my script I wrote and after that was over, I moved to center stage where my guitar was brought out to me and I sang, "Choose the Sky". Because both my speech & song had to be no longer than 5 minutes, I had to shorten my song. I chose to end the song with the line, "it's never too late to dream."

and it isn't. Keep up, all of you!

it's hard to see the image of the poster in the above picture, so here it is in a close up: