Tourette’s and me
Pianist Nick van Bloss on discrimination in music
Britain’s classical music establishment has, for a decade, shut out Nick van Bloss. The concert pianist, who has Tourette syndrome, is fed up with the UK’S top orchestras leaving him off the bill, and is on a mission to call out what he says is discrimination.
Van Bloss doesn’t have the kind of Tourette’s that makes him shout or swear. In fact, his condition is barely noticeable when we meet at his spacious Lisbon apartment. He is sitting with one leg resting on the other, his right hand concealed between them: excess nervous energy, as he describes it, is constantly coursing around his body. As we talk, Van Bloss channels the energy to his hidden hand, making his tics almost imperceptible, though occasionally, his Tourette’s takes over and his neck twinges, his jaw clenches and his whole face scrunches with a blink.
“You’re seeing a very controlled me,” he explains. “I am moving, there are movements going on every second that we’re speaking, but I learnt to redirect them after years of being bullied. It’s painful, but I had to get it away from where people look: the face and upper body.”
Van Bloss has spent countless hours in front of the mirror, training himself to suppress his condition, which started at the age of seven.
“I was a completely normal boy, then I woke up suddenly with head movements and violent contortions,” he says. “It just happened overnight.”
For years, Van Bloss had no respite from the physical or emotional impact of his Tourette’s. At school, teachers and pupils alike called him names, and encouraged one another to mock and mimic him.
The experience was “catastrophic,” he says. “I was destroyed in terms of my confidence. I never felt safe, I felt terrorised the whole time.”
At the age of 11, he discovered the only thing that has come close to a cure: the piano. When he first touched the keys, his Tourette’s disappeared.
“I just wiggled my fingers and I felt very calm. Calm was something I had never been,” he says. “It was a joy, because it gave me a break.”
Van Bloss developed an affinity for the instrument, which has since become his life’s work. In four decades, its ability to relax his body and make his tics disappear has continued. Now 51, his recordings have received critical acclaim and he has performed from Miami to Tokyo, including stops at London’s Cadogan Hall and Wigmore Hall. In a four-star review of one, The Daily Telegraph wrote that while he “shot to fame thanks to his struggle with Tourette’s, this CD will dispel any doubts about the level of his artistry”.
Though the condition has given him a unique energy as a musician and a backstory that compels fans, it has, by the same token, held him back, prompting him to withdraw from the public eye and, he claims, made him the victim of discrimination.
In his early 20s, Van Bloss was performing in the final of a competition in Spain when his arms froze in mid-air – the first and only
‘The UK has an appalling record celebrating homegrown music talent’
time his Tourette’s has affected him while playing. At the time, Van Bloss was under a lot of strain. He had finally been diagnosed with Tourette’s at the age of 21, after more than a decade of misdiagnoses ranging from “attention seeking” to epilepsy.
Diagnosis brought with it a new set of problems. Van Bloss started to test Tourette’s drugs, including sulpiride and haloperidol, that affected his ability to play just as he was trying to make it as a professional musician.
“The problem with many drugs is that they are incompatible with being a concert pianist,” he explains. “They delay reaction time, cloud one’s thinking and block the reactions that are so valuable to me.”
He partly attributes the seizure to the medication he had been testing; having expected to win the competition, he was disqualified, which prompted a 15-year break from playing. That didn’t mean he forgot about the piano, though. “I was playing constantly in my head and learning new things, but I didn’t touch a piano,” he says.
In 2008, Van Bloss agreed to play again for a BBC documentary, at which point “everything came back,” he recalls. Reviews hailed his performance at Cadogan Hall the following year as a “personal triumph”.
A decade later, however, Van Bloss has hit a new roadblock. Frustrated over what he thought was the UK’S leading orchestras ignoring him, he wrote to six institutions in April to ask why. “I’m perhaps the most eminent disabled musician,” he says. “But now I’m questioning them, they’re throwing mud and saying I’m not good enough.”
Van Bloss sent letters to the Royal Philharmonic, City of Birmingham Symphony, Hallé in Manchester, Philharmonia, Bournemouth Symphony and Royal Liverpool Philharmonic orchestras, all of which deny allegations of discrimination.
“The UK has an appalling record celebrating home-grown music talent,” he says. “We love showing off our sports people, we honour them and hold them up as role models. But it’s extremely difficult for British musicians to get the recognition they deserve.”
Part of the reason, he says, is that classical music institutions are out of touch and, as a result, are missing an opportunity to celebrate the kinds of musicians who could attract as yet untapped listeners.
“Audiences are diversifying and they love personal stories,” says Van Bloss. “But the people running the industry are corporate fossils who aren’t in touch.” He adds: “I’m not asking for positive discrimination, I’m asking for zero discrimination.”
Van Bloss’s problems with the music industry seem at odds with the public’s understanding of Tourette’s, which has improved in the 30 years since the seminal BBC documentary on the subject, John’s Not Mad, brought the condition to light for the first time. Explored through the eyes of 16-year-old John Davidson, its airing saw people up and down the country begin to have conversations about Tourette’s. “For so many years, Tourette’s was the swearing disease,”
‘People running the industry are corporate fossils who aren’t in touch’
says Van Bloss. “People know what it is now and that there are a lot of very creative, sensitive people with it.”
The teachers and pupils at the Royal College of Music, which he joined aged 15, were the first to accept Van Bloss for who he was.
“I was respected and enjoyed meeting people I knew would shape my future life,” he says. “It was like finding a new type of family.” He hopes, one day, to find the same acceptance in Britain’s professional institutions.
For now, Van Bloss is recording 96 tracks for a collection of Bach’s 48 Preludes and preparing to play at the Wigmore Hall again in December. He plays the piano to himself for four hours a day and spends the rest of his time secluded in the home he shares with his partner of 20 years. Van Bloss admits he leads a “hermetic life”, but says he enjoys it.
“I spent years hating myself because of Tourette’s,” he says. “Now, I not only accept it but embrace it. It’s part of what makes me unique as a person and musician.”