Background, professional training and performance history
Linda Diaz has been an advocate for Hard of Hearing and Deaf people for over 20 years. A musician and performer, she began to lose her hearing in 1985 due to Otosclerosis or Beethoven’s Disease. She became involved with the Hearing Loss Association of Lane County and began to learn techniques of communication using hearing aids and lip reading. She founded Hard of Hearing and Deaf Services in Lane County.
She became aware through her own experience and talking with others of the isolation that people with hearing loss experience due to communication challenges. She began a small sign language group which evolved into the Breaking the Sound Barrier Deaf and Hard of Hearing Choir. The choir has performed over the past four years throughout Lane County in venues such as the Valley River Center, V.A.L.I.D., Oregon Disability Conference, Oregon Cultural Arts Coalition at the Village Green, Bohemia Mining Days, local assistive living centers, and Lion’s Clubs. The group was reviewed in the Eugene Register Guard’s ’Oregon Life’ in February 2011. The article was called ‘Songs of Silence’
Artist statement and teaching philosophy
Instruments & classes taught
Linda is the leader of the deaf and hard-of-hering choir Breaking The Sound Barrier.