Legendary Composer Evan Solot on Navigating Hearing Loss as a Musician

Welcome to This Week in Hearing. I’m Shari Eberts, co author of Hear & Beyond Live skillfully with hearing loss, and I will be your host for this episode. This week, our guest is Evan Solot, music composer and a musician whose entire career has depended on excellent hearing in his over five decades in music. Evan’s work has been performed by jazz and pop musicians, including Mel Torme, Dionne Warwick, and Bette Midler. As a trumpet player, he also performed in over 50 Broadway shows and toured with stars including Frank Sinatra. Needless to say, he has not let his hearing loss slow him down. So thank you, Evan for being here to talk about your music and your hearing loss journey. So every person with hearing loss has a story, and I was hoping you could share a little bit about yours when it started and how it’s progressed. Well, the way it started was actually comical, and probably many people have experienced this. My wife and I were driving around on vacation in Vermont, and she said something to the effect of I think this is where Solzhenitsyn settled. You’re referring to Alexandr Solzhenitsyn, who wrote the Gulag Archipelago, you know, Russian dissident. And I said, that sounds like a great idea. Let’s do that. What did you think I said? And I said, I thought you said, let’s stop for some pizza. Of course you did. Right? So it comes down. And what I’ve learned since then, it continues to be comical throughout, you know, my life, is that, you know, what. What we, with hearing loss hear are the vowel sounds, you know, ah oo ee aa you know, all those long sounds, but we miss that /p/ /t/ /k/ P-T-K-C, you know, all that stuff. So it’s kind of comical because my wife is always amazed, you know, because I hear something that rhymed. But she said, but that makes absolutely no sense. How could you think that I said that? So anyway that’s the way it started. And that was when I first realized you know, that I was. That I was experiencing hearing loss. And I’ve been a professional musician my entire life and a performer in performing on trumpet and composing and arranging and conducting and all that, producing that kind of stuff. So I was very nervous about it. No one. I had the feeling that no one looks at you with a hearing aid and thinks, oh, there’s a person that has corrected their hearing loss. I think in my mind, people were looking at, that’s a person who can’t hear too well, which would be a kiss of death for a professional musician. So I got my first hearing aid and I remember it was a single hearing aid. And I remember the audiologist saying, step outside, and you’ll be amazed at the improvements that we’ve made in audiology. You know, a truck can come shrieking around the corner and you won’t even hear it. You know, it’ll just focus on your own voices. And I said, that’s not what I want. You know, I want the full range, from the lowest notes to the highest notes. And I can understand where many people mainly want to hear I. Voices they want to hear, you know, who they’re talking to and with and sharing with that. Not me. I mean, of course that’s important, but the breadth of sound is what I care about, not only care about deeply love. And, you know, that that’s what I live for. So you know, I’ve went over the years, I’ve gone through many different hearing aids and that, you know, there have been improvements along the way. Things have been good. Things have not been so good. Fortunately. When I started wearing hearing aids, I had long hair. Not exactly, that that I have now. So, although I was self conscious about it, I could cover, you know, my. No one would see that I was wearing a hearing aid. And then you know, in, in my business, it’s not a matter of, oh, here’s a person who has some hearing difficulty. Let’s see if we can help them. You know, it’s not that. It’s you’re hired because you’re the best at that. You know, I’m hired to play first trumpet in a Broadway show. No one wants to know about any problems that I have. If I’m not playing in tune, if I’m not playing at the top of my game, somebody else is going to be there. Next week, same thing in a recording studio. You know, we go in and record an album, and you’re there for a three hour recording session. You better be there, and you better not, and you better play in tune, and you better be beautiful, and you better not make mistakes, because otherwise somebody else will be there. It’s just the nature of the beast. It’s competitive, right? More than that. I mean, I could just continue on and blab if I’m recording and producing and mixing, and I’m responsible for the final product, and I’ve recorded this beautiful arrangement and hired all these musicians, and they’ve come in and I have to make the mix. That will be what eventually goes to the end user, to the listener, to the person that buys the record, that buys the album. If I don’t. If my hearing is not normal I will make the symbols too loud because I don’t hear them, you know, so I have to hear that as well as. As a person with great hearing. So anyway, you know, I’m so thrilled with the Signia hearing aids that I have now that I’m hearing things. Well, we can talk about that later, but it’s a much richer and detailed experience than anything I’ve had before. Well, that’s terrific, because I know a lot of people. Do find it very challenging to enjoy music, and if it’s your profession, to, you know, live and breathe and mix the music with hearing aids, because things are compressed, the sounds are compressed, there’s different tone qualities. So that’s wonderful that you’ve been able to find something that is successful for you. So do you have the one hearing aid or do you have. No, I have two. I have two hearing aids. Okay. And I’ve had. I started with one, you know, 30 years ago, but over the years, you know, I have two hearing aids and most recently what I learned from my audiologist. And this is a new audiologist, I mean, I mean, new in the last year or so and she explained to me, as other audiologists have explained, you know, there are different bands of frequencies, and according to your hearing loss, you know, we can fit you with this, that little cover, what you need. And we tried that and I said, well, it’s good, but it’s not great. And what I’ve come to realize is, yes, those bands of frequencies fill in the basic hearing needs, but if I want to hear the total richness, there are things that go into other frequencies that go into all the in between places. And that’s what blew me away when I finally got these I think they’re the top of the line of the Signia hearing aids. With all of these 22 or 23 bands of frequencies. I’m like, oh, my God. I mean it’s not just music. Its the kind of I love to. I can hear the leaves crunch when I walk in the fall, you know I can hear the wind whistling through the trees. You know, I should be saying I can hear my wife wonderfully, which of course I can, but I mean, those details. When I put my hearing aids on in the morning, we have a place in the mountains. I just came in from there today and I got up and put the hearing aids in, and I could hear these birds that were there the whole time. And maybe I would hear a fraction of them, but when I put them on, I mean, they’re a pain in the neck, and I’m thrilled that they are, you know, so well. I love thinking about that experience because I think so much of us, so many of us with hearing loss don’t even realize that we’re missing some of these sounds. And some of them are wonderful. Maybe some are annoying, but we still want the option to be able to experience them. Exactly. I have a friend husband of a friend of mine who needed hearing aids and got them, and he wasn’t wearing them. I said, why don’t you wearing them? He said, because when I put them on, I can hear, like, the air conditioner, you know? And I said, well, keep doing it. Keep wearing them, because that gets masked out. Your mind will mask that out after a while, but you need to hear that, you know, some people just don’t want to go through that, whatever that period is, and don’t want to hear the fans in the air. And just using the things that I cherish. Right. Well, I mean, and that’s the thing, like you said, that people sometimes don’t understand. You really hear with your brain more than you hear with your ears. And so you need to train your brain to understand what are the important sounds and what are the less important sounds. And it’s never going to be perfect. Right. Because hearing aids aren’t perfect. Right. But your brain will start to block out some of those extraneous. But the way you expressed it is you need to train your brain. I think that scares people to think that you need to do something. You don’t need to do anything at all. It happens naturally, you know, in turn. That’s true. Well, anything that’s worth doing sometimes requires a little bit of time and investment. People want it to be easy. I think people want, like, you put on glasses and you see, right? You put on your hearing aids and you hear. And unfortunately, we’re not at that point yet. It’s much more. It was like getting cataract surgery, you know? All of a sudden, it felt like the Wizard of Oz, you know, like the door opened and everything was a technicolor. You don’t realize what you’ve been missing. Right. Well, let’s back up a little bit. So it’s not every day that you meet such a prolific musician especially one that has a hearing loss. So can you talk a little bit about what drew you to music in the first place? Okay. When I was in fourth grade in the public school schools in Philadelphia, they said, you know, you could sign up for music lessons if you would like, and they take you into a room and give you a test, which is like singing America the Beautiful and doing things like this with your fingers, and can you do. And then in the end, they give you whatever’s left. Supposedly they’re giving you the perfect instrument for you. Oh, interesting. Okay. But in this case, every get what’s what was left, and they said, oh, you’re going to get a cornet and. Which is a small trumpet, but I didn’t know that at the time. You know, it’s a smaller trumpet. And I came home and said to my mom, I’m going to get a cornet. She said, no, cornet is a magazine, not an instrument. You must mean. You must mean clarinet. That’s what I was thinking. I said, no, another Benny Goodman. Anyway, when I brought it home, it was a, you know, it’s a trumpet. And and my story was. I was a fat little kid who was very bad at sports. I was the last one chosen on the team. And people would say, well, if you take Evan, we’ll give you two players. And, you know, everyone else was catching the ball and the ball would come at me and I was going to catch. So for me, practicing, you know, going. Being in my room and practicing and succeeding, feeding at something was a way of feeling. I felt great about myself. And, you know, in not too long, I got to be good or got to be good for a fifth grader. And then you get. And then all of a sudden you’re getting feedback that’s like, well, you know, let’s do this piece that it’ll feature the trumpet because we can do that. So that just built up over the years. And You know, I think I always loved music. I don’t think I loved music because I couldn’t do sports. I loved music because I love music, you know, because I love reading, because I love art, because I, you know I love literature. So but as time went on, I happened to be the best in various ensembles that I played in. In school. And. And you know, and then I got a scholarship to college, and, you know, just went on like that. I started teaching at the university right after I graduated, so. Wow. Yeah. It’s so important to expose children to music, right? Because it’s so random that you just got this trumpet, right, and then it’s become an important part of your life. So I love that. Yeah. And, you know, it’s a shame that now, you know, things are. The arts are being cut out of programs all over because of, you know, for financial reasons. And that, you know, the breadth of what we can be as humans is just lost. You know, it can’t all be science and math, right? No, absolutely. So you talked a little bit about this, but when you’re performing, do you actually disclose your hearing loss to your fellow musicians and the conductor, and if you do, how do they react and are they able to help you out or, you know, how does that. How does that work? No I don’t reveal it. I mean, people who know me and have. And that I’ve worked with before, of course, know that I wear hearing aids, and that’s fine. It’s like wearing glasses, you know, you see. You know, you wear them and other people wear them. But as I said before, you know, it’s competitive, and people want to perform but be sitting next to great players there, you know, other. Other good performers or other great musicians. And if I’m in the recording studio or if I’m conducting I need to hear all the instruments and what. And what everybody’s doing. No one is going to say that. Like, as I said before, no one is going to say to me, oh, you have some hearing problems. Let’s see what we can do for you. You know, you have some hearing problems. Bye. Oh, wow. That’s a tough business. Well, I mean I’ve never thought about it that way. But, you know, what if you were whatever you were an engineer and you’re developing new products and the people that you’re working with, you can’t communicate with them because you can’t hear them properly. Right? Although, I guess, as a hearing loss advocate, and other advocates would tell you that there are lots of accommodations recommendations, right. For people with hearing loss captions that can help in terms of your example with the, you know, the electricians or like the scientific people, like, they can communicate very well with captioning or a music situation. There are hearing loops where you can have, the sound is coming directly into your hearing devices, which might make it. Easier to hear the full ensemble even if you have hearing aids or because you have the hearing aids with the telecoil. So I always feel like there’s always a way around it. But I understand it’s challenging. They’re not set up for it. You know, during recording studio, you’re wearing headphones and you’re wearing the same headphones that everybody else is wearing. And if you have, if you’re not hearing certain frequencies, you’re not hearing certain frequencies. Now some of the things that are tricky are if you’re getting feedback from your hearing aids and it’s whistling, that’s no good either. So you have to find a way to make that accommodation and get the balance where it doesn’t happen. Lately I mean, with these new hearing aids, I have all the accessories. So I can hear if I’m listening to a podcast on my phone or my iPad. It’s going directly into my ears, it’s bypassing the speakers. You know, it’s bypassing everything else. And it’s great. You know, I’m turning down the sound. I have I have this television streamlined television or something like that. It’s called where the sound from the tv goes directly, you know, through whatever filters. And into my ears I’m hearing. If I’m watching a movie with with my wife, or with a number of people, I know that I’m hearing better than they are because I’m hearing what the audio people who made the film did, you know, for the theater, for the best listening circumstances, I noticed I heard a mosquito fly from the left to the right on a close up of the screen. And I know that the other people were not hearing that. So it’s just it’s mind blowing. Im so. I don’t mean to be gushy or whatever, but I’m thrilled with my hearing. The other thing is that we have this mic for my wife that we use for a while. But what happened with that is she got so used to just talking in a normal voice. She can be two rooms away and talking in a normal voice. And I hear it full volume, as if she’s there. And I answer in a normal voice and then she can’t hear me. Right, right. It can be tricky when you. That’s pretty awesome. Yeah. So can you talk a little bit about what impact your hearing loss has had on your life outside of music? Oh, that’s what’s the term for that? Nodding you know, you’re in a group. Yeah. You’re bluffing. You know, you can’t keep. You don’t feel that you can keep saying what, what, what? Or that you’re going to embarrass yourself by answering a question that was not exactly what was asked, you know? So in those situations, you know, you’re Uh-huh huh. You don’t say, you just get these phrases that you can use that are concealing that you’re not really there. And that’s sad. I mean, not to be there, you know? Yeah there’s not much else I can say about that, but I’ve been in situations where you know, we’ll be at a potluck with a bunch of people and, you know, and my wife said, oh, I saw you were sitting talking to Mark and Bill. You know, what were they saying? You know, what were you talking about? I don’t know. Oh that was pretty, you know. Yeah. But But now, I mean, I even have, you know, with my phone, I can change the direction. You know, I can hear people that are on that side more so because that’s where the sound is coming from. So you know, there’s a lot of control, and you know, I feel like I’m back in the game. That’s terrific. I’m glad to hear that. That’s one of the things that. One of the reasons that we wrote the book, hear and beyond lives skillfully with hearing loss. I’m one of the co authors also Gael Hannan, one of the co authors, and we wrote about all these things that people with hearing loss can do to get themselves back into the conversation, right? And some of it, our technology tools and some of it is letting people know we have hearing loss so that we ask them what we do. Or maybe it’s changing seats, or maybe it’s another tool, or maybe it’s lip reading or speech reading. So it seems like there’s sort of this whole host of skills that we can use in order to communicate better. So it sounds like you’re on that, that path, but you might be interested in learning more about those. So I’d like to. No problem. So it sounds like you’ve kind of been keeping your hearing loss quiet, you know, in your professional life. So what it prompted you to want to be talking about it here on this podcast and sort of being more public about your hearing loss? Well, it’s nothing. It’s not like I’m hiding it. But I’m not broadcasting it. You know what I mean? I’m not saying, here I am. Look at that. I’m wearing hearing aids. There’s no reason to do that. I just want to be with the best musicians and playing well and having an equal experience. Another person could be wearing hearing aids or not. And it really doesn’t make any difference to me. That’s not what it’s about. But I think that the change in the detail and breadth and depth of my hearing has gotten is so satisfying and thrilling and. Oh, my God, this is it. I’m getting the whole thing. It’s not like I can understand what you’re saying. It’s more. It’s so much more than I can understand what you’re saying. You know, I can. I can hear you tapping your fingernails on the desktop, you know I can hear the pages turning if you’re, you know, if you’re pretending that you’re not, you know, looking at your notes. Yeah. So I, you know, like I said, I’m It’s embarrassed that I feel a little embarrassed to be so gushy about it, if that’s the right terminology. But it is emotional, right. It’s giving. It’s giving you access back to something that’s so important to you and also those relationships with people, which is what life is all about. So it makes sense to be gushy about it or whatever. Yeah. I mean, I’ve had a lot of success over the years as things have developed, you know, but. But nothing ever. This felt like a giant leap, you know, to get to this place, and I’m just thrilled, and I’m happy to share it with people. As a matter of fact, that’s, you know, it’s not just that I’m sharing it with you. You know, my cohort are people that are, you know, my age, a little younger, a little older, you know, and everybody is somebody who’s saying what? What, you know, I say, you know, you can solve that, you know? So I feel like I’m you know, I’m losing the words because another thing that happens at your age I’m proactively sharing, you know, telling people, you know, that they can do more, and you should really try it. Give it a shot. Yeah. You’re an ambassador. I love that. Yeah. Yep, yep. So, last question for you is just any advice that you have for other musicians with hearing loss, how can they live better with it? They need to take care of it. I mean, if you. If you can’t hear perfectly this one thing to get to the level of richness that I was talking about, the crinkling and all that. All that little detail. But if you’re not hearing yourself and others perfectly, you can’t be playing in tune. You know, you can’t be balanced. You can’t be playing at the right level where if you’re in a section of, you know, or four or five people and you’re all playing together, you’re playing too loud or you’re playing too soft or you’re sharp or you’re flat that’s not acceptable. And, you know, it shouldn’t be acceptable to you. You know, personally, we’re all trying to be our best at whatever it is we do, and somebody is not doing the best, and they may not be there next time. So do something about it. Take some action. I love that. Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Evan, for being on the podcast. My pleasure. Sharing your experiences. I wish you lots of continued success in your music. Thank you. And if our listeners want to learn more about Evan and his music, they can visit evansolot.com. and that’s s-o-l-o-t. So thanks again. Thank you. Been a pleasure.