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As Claire Culbreath prepares to play the piano at a private country club in Forsyth County, she has to fight her nerves.

This evening gig is Culbreath's audition. If she impresses the club's owners, she could land regular work playing in the lounge.

The Winston-Salem singer, songwriter and pianist says this is one of the few occasions when it pays to be blind.

"The advantage that I have, though, is that I don't see who's out there. I can't tell if they're staring at me or not," Culbreath says.

"So I can hear stuff, but it's like, ' OK, they're not really listening to me, and I'm gonna just play.'

"That's the way I've got to look at it."

Culbreath lost her eyesight due to diabetes at age 28. A lifelong musician, her talent for playing the piano is all the more remarkable because she must play without depending on sheet music. Though her disability requires her to play solely from memory, the end result is a type of beauty that even she can see.

* * *

Sitting at an antique piano in her mother's living room, Culbreath says she has memorized more than 80 songs by heart including Christmas songs, jazz music, hymns and several pop songs.

"I think I can do whatever somebody wants a piano player for," Culbreath says. "I can do maybe say three hours of Christmas music or three hours of jazz, but what my show is, if they want a really good variety show, I can give them a little bit of everything."

When Culbreath speaks, her voice wavers slightly, as if she's unsure anyone is listening to her. However, when she sings, a transformation occurs. Her alto singing voice has the boom of confidence she lacks during casual conversation.

"When I do sing and play, I'm not nervous," Culbreath says. "I just get up there and feel like I'm in my own little world, because I've always wanted to be able to play by ear and sing my favorite pop tunes and even just get out there in public and sing in front of people."

She plays "It's Too Late," a song by Carole King, one of her favorite musicians. While reciting the lyrics about the bitter end of a relationship, Culbreath's jazzy, no-nonsense vocals sound as if she and King share equal parts of the same soul.

"I love the chords," Culbreath says of the song after she finishes playing. "It's got a great beat to it, and it's just a lot of fun."

Culbreath is smiling today, but she understands the heartbreaking struggle embodied in King's song all too well.

Culbreath was diagnosed with juvenile diabetes at age 10. She says she was in denial at the time, and did very little in terms of diet to keep her blood sugar under control.

"And I wasn't that good about taking my medicine either, and that's what really hurt me," she says. "Because I started feeling it and really seeing it probably around when I was 28 years old."

After receiving her degree in music therapy at East Carolina University, Culbreath began seeing dark spots (called "floaters") blocking her field of vision. She also felt increasingly painful pressure in her eyes. The pressure in her right eye became so intense that a doctor suggested Culbreath have it removed.

"I was in so much pain that I was like, 'Well, whatever, I'm still going to have the other eye.'"

With one working eye, Culbreath continued to live a normal life. She had a boyfriend, as well as an internship at a veterans' hospital in Virginia. But on July 4, 1998, she lost both of these things to the darkness.

She spent the first part of the day eating lunch at her mother's house in Winston-Salem, waiting to enjoy the evening's fireworks with her boyfriend.

"I was sitting at the table, and what happened was with this good eye, the blood vessels exploded, and when that happened, I was like, 'I can't see,'" Culbreath says. "I thought it must have been a floater or something."

She later adds: "And I remember going to the fireworks that night, and I was sitting down on the car with my boyfriend and I could hear the fireworks going on, but I couldn't see them, and I was saying, 'Well, I really can't see the fireworks right now.'"

Culbreath believed her doctor would be able to repair her condition with laser eye surgery. However, after many failed attempts to improve her eyesight, Culbreath and her doctors realized her condition might be permanent.

"I felt kind of numb, and I didn't really know how to feel," Culbreath says. "There was so much going on in my life at that time, that I just tried to remain positive, and just try to think of the future."

After the diagnosis, Culbreath was unable to return to her internship. And then when she began attending the Governor Morehead School for the Blind in Raleigh, her boyfriend ended their relationship.

"He tried as best he could to try and handle it, but it's hard," Culbreath says. "It takes a special person to take somebody who's blind."

Culbreath remembers the heartache caused by this bitter break-up in her song, "I Can't See You Now." In it, she sings: "It's getting darker here, as your world lights up/ It's getting darker here/ But at least I can't see you now."

* * *

During a five-year period of rehabilitation, Culbreath leaned on her lifelong love of playing the piano as a means to lift her spirits and start a new career. The only problem was she didn't know how to play without sheet music. That's when she met Winston-Salem musician and North Carolina School of the Arts graduate Michael 'Zoo' Zeoli of the band Joe Next Door. Zeoli, who is also a piano teacher, had never taught someone who was blind before, but he was up for the challenge.

Through a system of memorizing chords, piano keys, and various hand and finger configurations, Zeoli taught Culbreath how to learn and play music by ear. He also helped by workshopping her original songs and encouraged her to start singing in front of live audiences.

"I wasn't sure if I was going to be able to get it or be able to do it, but once he began teaching me where to start and a few basic chords, it started to fall in place," Culbreath says. "Then I suddenly got the feeling that I would be able to do this again if I continued the training."

Zeoli says, "With the cliché about blind musicians being fantastic with their instruments, most of those people were born blind and learned how to play the instrument blind. But Claire had been an accomplished pianist before she even lost her sight, and so she was really handicapped by her blindness."

Now Culbreath plays music professionally on a regular basis. She has written many of her own songs; does frequent solo gigs at local coffee shops and retirement homes; and has even started a band, Shadowbox Two, with her boyfriend, John Brandon.

"It's so nice because now I'm not so dependent on the music, and I feel so much more free when I play," Culbreath says. "I don't have to look at every note, and I basically do my own thing."

As for Culbreath's audition at the country club, she thinks that it went well. Several members from the audience congratulated her performance. And Claire adds that while the club's manager seemed noncommittal regarding a future date, she has no reason to stop thinking positively.

Culbreath says, "I'm just going to be confident and hope that she will have me come back."

Joe Scott is a freelance contributor. Contact him at movieshowjoe@gmail.com.

 

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