Tourette’s Pianist To Perform Again
Nick van Bloss (pictured), 41, described by award-winning music producer Michael Hass as the most exciting pianist in years, retired from life as a professional musician as his Tourette’s got worse. His body assaulted by 38,000 tics a day, he found it too much to carry on giving public recitals when he was 26. But now – after overcoming cancer and recovering the confidence in his own ability – he is to resume performing. The twist: the only time van Bloss’s tics stop is when he is seated at a piano stool.
After being one of just six pianists from Britain invited to play at the Chopin Festival in Warsaw in 1994, he decided he did not have the energy to battle Tourette’s and consistently perform in public. Trained at the Royal College of Music and tipped in his youth as a potential musical superstar, he felt held back by perceptions that he was only trading on his condition and was somehow considered “a fake”. He said: “People were never indifferent to my music. They either loved it and gushed about it or hated it. I always said to myself that the latter convinced themselves that they should hate me.
