How Cheryl’s hearing loss helped her to create music from nature

After more than 30 years in the Arts, USW Drama graduate and musician Cheryl Beer lost her hearing overnight. Despite this life-changing experience, she has used her hearing loss to visually compose music inspired by the natural world, helping to raise awareness of environmental issues and deconstructing stereotypes about disability.

Cheryl was a finalist in this year’s St David Awards – the national awards of Wales organised by the Welsh Government – in recognition of her contribution to Welsh culture. Of the 10 Awards given each year, nine are nominated for by the public, and the finalists and winners are decided on by the First Minister.

 

 

Having originally come to Wales to study as a teenager, Cheryl was the first in her family to go to University (then the Polytechnic of Wales) – and returned to USW 25 years later to embark on the MA in Drama.

“I’d worked in the Arts all my life as a musician, performer, songwriter and composer, which led to a career as a Musical Director and then an Artistic Director,” said Cheryl.

“But much of my work had come from instinct, and I wanted to embed theory into my practice. The MA enabled me to unpack all of who I was, lay it out in front of me and make considered choices about what and how to include or exclude, when and for what benefit. It was a profoundly deep experience that helped me tremendously some years later, when I suffered from sudden hearing loss that literally happened overnight.”

Cheryl had come back from a gig in Switzerland, went to bed and woke up wondering why she couldn’t hear the birds singing.

“At first, I thought my career had ended,” she said. “Music wasn't just my work; it was how I defined myself. Hearing loss, accompanied by severe 24/7 tinnitus and debilitating hyperacusis meant from that point, I have lived with a sound sensitivity that leads to complete overwhelm.”

Cheryl retreated to the woods opposite her cottage in West Wales and there, she says nature began to heal her.

“I still had my hearing loss and associated conditions, but nature taught me to grow in new ways,” she said. “I made a promise to pay back the natural world through my creative practice, although at the time I didn't know what shape that might be.”

Once she had been fitted with NHS hearing aids, Cheryl began recording nature narratives for older people in care homes during the Covid-19 lockdowns, and while doing this, she decided to explore how her hearing aids had enabled her to re-engage with her creativity and serve her community. She started to study the technology behind them and wondered if they could become the art itself.

 

 

Cheryl secured a research mentorship with Addo Creative Consultancy, and spent four months learning how to use and repurpose spectral frequency, which is used to measure hearing loss and program hearing aids.

She then used the technology to measure marine biorhythms at the flood defence walls in Llanelli, where she now lives, along the Millennium Coastal Path. While taking the readings, Cheryl realised that the spectra were measuring pitch, and so as a musician, she began notating the pitches of the tides to compose music led by the sea. In doing this, she learned how to compose in collaboration with nature, using visual sound.

From this research, Cheryl joined arts commissioning body Unlimited, and spent a year in the rainforests of Wales, repurposing all sorts of equipment to record the unique surroundings.

“I recorded from beneath the bark and composed music led by the rainforests themselves, empowering them to have their own voice in raising awareness of fragile ecologies,” she said.

Her project, Cân y Coed Rainforest Symphony, was launched at the National Botanic Garden of Wales with a permanent installation, before Cheryl embarked on an 18-month worldwide tour.

She has represented the UK at The Great Garden of Diversity in Qatar, became part of the Welsh Cultural Squad with Wales Arts International, exhibited in Indonesia and showcased in Canada, as well as hosting solo shows at Brighton ONCA gallery and environmental exhibitions at the MAC in Birmingham.

Cheryl has also had her work exhibited by all of the 36 TATE associated galleries across the UK, including a solo show in Orkney. The tour ended at the Houses of Parliament in December last year, as well as the inaugural Festival of Silence, adjacent to Hyde Park.

After the tour, Cheryl was selected as one of only eight artists from across Wales to research ways of connecting more deeply to nature, with the Future Wales Fellowship. To implement this research, she is currently Artist in Residence at the National Botanic Garden of Wales.

 

 

Cheryl has also recently been awarded funding from the Arts Council of Wales to explore inclusive orchestration for Cân y Coed Rainforest Symphony, arranging it for a bass recorder quintet.

On being a finalist for the St David Award for Culture, Cheryl said: “It was a great honour and really very humbling, especially when I think back to where my work began. But I must say, the key to the reach of my work has been through the development of cultural and environmental partnerships, particularly through the Arts Council of Wales, Coed Cadw, Fusion Carmarthenshire and many others.

“To be recognised in this way for my contribution is an acknowledgement of all those organisations who have worked alongside me.”