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Featured Bio |
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Music Through The Eyes Of Faith
Bree Noble was born with congenital
glaucoma. This means that she did not have the ducts necessary to allow
fluid to pass in and out of the eye, which caused pressure to rise, and Bree
to lose a great deal of her sight while still in the womb. By the time
she was two, she had undergone numerous surgeries; however, she still
remained legally blind. By utilizing reading aids, Bree learned to grow
up with glaucoma. She attended local public schools because her parents
believed it was best for her to be integrated with other children and she
found that she enjoyed it as well. She had a resource teacher that
helped her with the simple basics such as learning how to cross the street
and catch a bus and she became involved in sports and whatever else she could
manage like her peers. When she was a senior in high school, it
became necessary for Bree to have additional surgery on her right eye because
the pressure wasn’t being controlled. During the surgery, something went
horribly wrong, causing hemorrhaging and permanent damage to the
retina. Consequently, Bree completely lost all sight in her right eye.
Although she never regained sight in that eye, Bree eventually recovered from
the surgery, returned to school and was able to graduate at the top of her
class. Up to this point and throughout her high
school years, music was a big part of Bree’s life, so when it came time for
picking a college she chose Westmont, a liberal arts college located in Santa
Barbara, CA, where she could also study music. Being a small school,
Westmont afforded Bree the opportunity to obtain individualized attention
from her professors, who even allowed her to take exams in her dorm room so
she could use her large print reading machine. The accommodating nature
of both the professors and the school proved to be instrumental support in a
journey that most would find daunting. While at school,
Bree played the keyboard and sang with a performing ensemble, Zephaniah that
traveled all over the western states. Although she yearned to be a
musician or vocalist, Bree knew she had to be practical. Her solution
was to work toward a business degree that would allow her to find a job after
graduation, as well as obtain a degree in the discipline of her heart’s
choosing, music. After graduating, Bree secured a job in the accounting
field and worked on her music on the side. She eventually managed to
land a position seemingly tailor-made for her and from 1999 to 2004, was the
Director of Finance at an Opera company. She states, “Now I could use
all of my music knowledge and get front row seats to every opera!”
This has worked for her so well that even when she had her daughter Julia in
2003 and found that trying to split a full-time work load between home and
the office was just too much, she was then able to execute a graceful exit
from her job and facilitated an arrangement whereby she could continue as a
consultant part-time from home. This one-year supposition has blossomed
into a three-year reality. |