Melodies no longer ring in Jacob Boland’s ears, since he lost most of his hearing after several bouts of COVID-19 — but his head and heart are still full of music.
He started singing in grade school, and he was inspired by his choir director at San Clemente High School.
Now 22, he keeps a notebook by his bed to jot down composition ideas, and he carries a conductor’s baton around with him.
And on Thursday, a couple of weeks after learning he’s almost totally deaf in his left ear and has about 10 to 15% of normal hearing in his right, Boland will sing Handel’s “Messiah” with the Long Beach Camerata Singers.
“There’s something about the unification and the beauty of making music in a group setting that really just struck a fire in my soul where I was just like, ‘This is what I want to do,’” he said.
Boland has been interested in music and the arts since childhood, and after studying at Cal State Long Beach for a while, he recently transferred to Fullerton College, which accepted him into a vocal studies program.
Sometime in 2020, his doctor told him he seemed to have reduced hearing, Boland said, but he didn’t think much about it. Then, in 2021, he got COVID-19 three times.
“I woke up one morning and it felt like everything was underwater. I was like, ‘What is happening,’ really upset.”
An audiologist diagnosed Boland with sensorineural hearing loss in both ears; it’s a common condition that can follow damage to the inner ear’s nerve endings.
His initial response was not positive — he thought his chance at a music career was ruined. Even Boland’s mother, who’s always been supportive, sat him down and suggested maybe he should find another pursuit.
But when he went to the piano and put his head down on it to feel the vibrations, he said, “I found that I can hear the music in my head, and I think that’s something that can only be given from God.”
That wasn’t his only gift. While adjusting to life with whatever sound he could get from hearing aids, Boland realized things that might once have seemed like challenges were now assets in disguise.
As someone on the autism spectrum, Boland sometimes finds it hard to make eye contact, so as a kid he started watching people’s lips instead. He also found it interesting to see how their mouths pronounced the words, so picking up lip reading was a snap.
And years before the sounds in his ears began to fade, Boland had learned American Sign Language to better communicate with a hard-of-hearing friend.
Those skills allowed him to rapidly adjust to his new, quieter reality – and maybe that’s why people Boland sings with say they didn’t initially realize he was deaf. But recently, he’s opened up about it and even provided ASL interpretation for a recent concert, Long Beach Camerata Singers Artistic Director James Bass said.
In the classically-focused group, a fluctuating chorus of about 70 to 90 vocalists, “the dynamic is that people look at him and say, ‘wow, I’m not dealing with that extra thing that he’s having to deal with – maybe I should sit up a little straighter and work a little harder,” Bass said.
Like everyone in the Camerata Singers, Boland earned his place by auditioning. But while it’s a selective group, Bass and group president Jan Hower are proud to say it represents the Long Beach community.
Apart from a paid professional corps of about two dozen singers, Hower said, everyone else is a music lover with a day job.
“We have real estate agents, we have a music store owner, we have lab technicians and engineers,” she said.
And now they have Boland, who’s ready to do whatever it takes to forge a career in music, perhaps as a composer or a conductor. His backup plan is to study medicine and work as a physician assistant.
Boland said he appreciates music in different ways now that he can’t hear it as he used to – he pays more attention to the story behind it, and he’s learning to understand the connection between notes on a page and the quivering of the air when they’re played or sung.
He hopes his experience and others like it will help light the way for people who get a diagnosis of hearing loss and feel despair.
“I’m like, have you ever thought about listening to music just sitting on the floor and feeling the vibrations, line after line, or walking around with vibrating headphones and just going through and conducting through to feel where you want to shape that music?” he said.
“I think it really puts into perspective the power and the story that music has to offer, but also the humanness of us all, that we are all interconnected.”
The Long Beach Camerata Singers and the Tesserae Baroque Ensemble will perform Handel’s Messiah at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Dec. 21, at the Beverly O’Neill Theater, 300 E. Ocean Blvd., Long Beach. More information and tickets are available at longbeachcameratasingers.org.