FROM DEAF BOY TO CONDUCTOR
AMAN who got through primary school by lip reading after doctors discovered he was deaf has battled the odds to become a talented conductor. As a child, Robert Guy lived in near silence after doctors discovered he was deaf at the age of three.
His hearing difficulties were spotted by his grandmother, who started teaching him piano at the age of three.
“I was born 70% deaf and it was picked up by my gran when I was having piano lessons with her,” he said.
“I had operations to improve that and I was lucky that I managed to get my hearing back as I got older.”
Robert, 29, from Wrexham, was a regular visitor to hospital growing up because tubes in his ears were blocked.
“I started on the piano because I came from a musical family and my nana taught half of (the village) Llay,” he said.
“My nana picked up that something was wrong and I got through primary school by lip reading.
“When you’re young you just think that what you’re hearing is just normal. But other people at school started to realise.”
It wasn’t until after he overcame childhood deafness that he realised what he had been missing.
“After the operation I wouldn’t get in the car because I was terrified of the engine,” he said.
“When I got back and sat in the garden and came in I said to my mum, ‘I think I can hear the birds now’.
“That was the moment when my mum became really choked up and went, ‘Oh wow!’”
“It was exhilarating, music became my whole world and continues to be,” said Robert.
Had Robert – who plays violin, viola and piano – not been able to hear, he would not have been able to become a musician.
“My tuning was pretty bad on the violin,” he said. “As I got to the point my hearing was getting better I had to become more disciplined.
“I was not expecting to be able to hear things and I had slipped into bad habits.”
But after attending the University of Manchester and the Royal Northern College of Music, he has founded Wrexham’s Sinfonia Orchestra and is director of the choral programme at the University of Manchester.
“We are the resident orchestra at the North Wales International Music Festival, we replaced the BBC National Orchestra of Wales,” Robert said.
“That is indicative of the standard we have managed to achieve.”
“To do music professionally you need to be able to hear,” he said. “You need to be able to develop the way you listen as well.”
Robert, who now lives in Stockport, loves his job.
“If I had been prevented from doing that, that would have been a travesty for me,” he said. “I’m so glad it was a problem I was able to overcome because I love every day I wake up.”
Now he has been picked from 300 candidates to take part in the prestigious 2017 Cadaqués Orchestra International Conducting Competition in Catalonia, Spain.
Past winners include Russian-born Vasily Petrenko, now chief conductor of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, and Gianandrea Noseda, the Principal Guest Conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra.
Robert is one of 60 young conductors from around the world selected to compete in the preliminary round on December 12 and 13.
Participants will be judged on their conducting skills of the Chamber Ensemble of the Cadaqués Orchestra and the full Cadaqués Orchestra in an event which will be broadcast live online by streaming video.
A maximum of 10 conductors will be chosen to go on to the final in Barcelona on December 15 when members of the Cadaqués Orchestra itself will be among the judges.
“There are 60 people in the first round so I will see where I go from there,” he said.
“I just want to do well and I am working really hard.
“There is a huge amount of music to prepare. I’m just focused on working as hard as I can to prepare.”
“The final actually takes place on my birthday, so depending on how I do, I’ll either be on an aeroplane flying home that day or in the spotlight conducting in the competition of my life.”