On January 20, 2020, Clemency Burton-Hill, then 38 years old, suffered a huge and life-threatening brain haemorrhage. She had an undiagnosed condition, an arteriovenous malformation (AVM), a rare and abnormal cluster of blood vessels meshing the arteries and veins in her brain, which, even more rarely, had ruptured – a situation fatal in most cases. She spent the next 17 days in a coma. Friends and family were told that she may not make it and, if she did, she would be changed radically.
When she woke up, Burton-Hill could not see, could not form words and had lost all sensation in the right side of her body – along with almost half her skull, removed during life-saving emergency surgery to release the pressure on her brain. More surgeries followed, including a cranioplasty to replace the half of her skull that had been removed.
For the first several weeks, says Burton-Hill, “I had no words, just this weird sound. In my head I was like, ‘I know! I’ve got it!’ But I had no speech.”
This was particularly bewildering for Burton-Hill. Language and speech are, she says, “my life, my identity”. An accomplished classical musician since childhood, she took violin lessons from Yehudi Menuhin and in her twenties performed as a soloist and chamber violinist, touring the world with Daniel Barenboim and the groundbreaking West-Eastern Divan Orchestra. She then moved into television and radio, presenting from the Proms, reporting for BBC2’s The Culture Show and hosting Radio 4’s Front Row and the Radio 3 weekday breakfast show. On the day her AVM ruptured, she was viewing a new music venue as part of the role for which she had relocated from London to New York in 2018: creative director at WQXR, America’s leading classical radio station.
Exactly one year later she was back on radio, speaking about her experiences on Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour. Since then she has recorded several podcasts, including an episode of the series she formerly fronted, Classical Fix, and a BBC radio documentary about her beloved Bach.
“People always say, ‘Oh, it’s a very good recovery in terms of speech and language,’ especially where it hit in my brain, but in a way it makes sense,” she says. “I never go to the gym and don’t have any other muscle memory. I only have speech and language, connection and communication.”
Perhaps the only thing more remarkable than her recovery is her complete absence of self-pity. She uses the word “lucky” 14 times in the course of our conversation. “I hope it doesn’t sound vacuous,” she adds after one invocation. “My gratitude is total.”
In mid-November she took part in her first public speaking engagement since her injury, on a panel alongside the New York neurosurgeon who saved her life, Dr Christopher Kellner, in front of an audience of AI pioneers and health-tech start-ups.
“So many people have said, ‘You must have been so nervous,’ but funnily I wasn’t, because that – being in front of a microphone – is my safe space.”
It’s a bright, bitingly cold winter’s day in New York when I meet Burton-Hill, now 40, on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, close to her rehab centre. En route, she texts me to say she’s running five minutes late, but that EJ, the barista at the tiny coffee shop where we’re meeting, knows her order (large latte, whole milk, extra shot, half-caff – she’s not officially supposed to drink coffee). She arrives in a huge green puffy coat, chunky white trainers, a beanie and fingerless gloves that spell FEMI on one hand and NIST on the other.
EJ doesn’t just remember her coffee order; he has played an important and symbolic role in her life post-rupture. “He was the first person after my re-entry to the world that I felt comfortable with,” she tells me, as we settle on a bench outside. “I went into the coffee shop, gave my order and he said, ‘What’s your name?’ I said, ‘Clemmie,’ and he just went, ‘Cool,’ and wrote my name on the cup. I can’t tell you how often the opposite happens,” she says.
Her speech, while vastly improved, remains impeded and she still struggles for certain words. “Inside I know exactly what the word is. I know exactly what the meaning is,” she says. “Idioms are hard,” she adds. Her vocabulary, even impaired, is vast.
Communication is not always as relaxed as ours this morning though. “It’s New York. Everyone’s impatient. You get flustered and in the end you think, ‘OK, I’m just going to leave, because it’s not worth it.’ And then you think, ‘I won’t go into that situation like that again.’ ”
For the first year-plus after the rupture, such situations would cause her anxiety. “Now I just try to tell myself: it doesn’t matter. Try to get your coffee order but if you can’t get it out, it doesn’t matter. And then don’t go anywhere near that coffee shop again.”
Along with caffeine and alcohol, stress and anxiety should be avoided, as they can trigger the epileptic seizures Burton-Hill has suffered since her brain surgery. “I’m medicated up to the nines, but the seizures are traumatic,” she admits. “You try to go outside and engage in normal life, but New York is very noisy and hectic and your brain can’t filter.”
Her seizures mean she is limited in what she can do with her children. “If I had a seizure in the street, that’s not great with a three year-old.” (Her elder son, Tomo, is six.)
“I can’t really do much for myself,” she continues, “because everything is just with one hand, on my left side. I can make a cup of tea. I can put soup in the microwave and toast in the toaster. I can’t necessarily butter it, but I’m not going to starve.”
She laughs and says that she was never a great cook anyway. “As a student I would eat pasta three times a day.” Now even pasta is difficult, because she can’t drain it. “I’m not doing badly, and these things are so unimportant in a way, but they’re also heartbreaking. Because I’m not independent.” She can now wash her hair with her left hand – “I’ve probably got shampoo residue, but who cares?” – and, post-radiotherapy, her hair itself has changed dramatically. “I’d never had a curl in my life, and now I have curly hair.” She’s philosophical about it. “I try to think about it as a helpful thing, a sort of outward reminder that seismic things happened and we don’t know why. The mystery is quite tangible – I can see it in the mirror and I can touch it.”
Smiling is hard, as one half of her body will not connect with her brain. “And I am a very smiley person. Every time I’ve happened to see a photograph of myself over the past two years I’ve thought, ‘Wow, is this what I look like?’ ”
There are more intangible changes too, such as needing to write every appointment in her calendar. “I wasn’t particularly organised but I didn’t have to write things down before. I’d never used a calendar. “You’re so habituated to the way that you move through the world, so you have to get reacquainted with it,” she says. “And it’s a balance of: am I trying to go back to who I was, or do I just have to deal with the reality of what I’ve been lucky to have – life?”
In her twenties Burton-Hill worked as a staff writer at Vogue, was the youngest UK broadsheet columnist, at The Daily Telegraph, and wrote two novels. In 2017 she published her first nonfiction book, Year of Wonder: Classical Music for Every Day, an aural prescription in 365 doses.
She was a month or so from finishing the manuscript for its sequel, Another Year of Wonder, when her AVM ruptured. The book was published two days ago with a new introduction and substantial rewrites, “because of what happened in the world [the pandemic], and also because classical music had been through a reckoning on race, class, all those things as well”. Still without sensation on her right side, Burton-Hill, who is right-handed, cannot use a computer. The new chapters have been written entirely with her left thumb using the keyboard on her phone.
As she writes in her introduction to the first volume, “What lies ahead is not some white girl with a posh name telling you that you ‘should’ listen to classical music every day in order to somehow become a better, smarter or more classy person… nor am I trying to stealthily replace your Real Housewives or Love Island habit… What I am determined to do though is to extend a hand to those who feel that the world of classical music is a party to which they haven’t been invited.” Burton-Hill doesn’t believe it should even be called “classical” music. “It’s just music.”
That said, her own relationship with the genre has been strained at points since her brain injury. “I don’t want to gloss over the fact that it’s been very difficult for me.” When she woke up, “Understandably, everyone wanted to know what I wanted to hear. And in the beginning it was too much [to listen to classical]. There’s so much bound up with it – things that I’d played or performed – so it was easier to listen to other genres.” Was that because she was fearful she would never be able to play again, or because it ignited memories that were painful now? “I think both.”
While she aims to demystify classical music, she also seeks to underscore the mystery of music. Her doctors speculate that her impressive recovery of speech and language may have much to do with her early musical training, in particular in the Suzuki method. This teaching philosophy was created by the Japanese violinist Shinichi Suzuki, and it not only teaches children from a very young age, when the neural pathways in the brain governing language are still developing, but also mimics the process of acquiring and mastering a native language. “So music can be another mother tongue,” says Burton-Hill. It’s a hunch that is impossible to prove but, says Burton-Hill, “That is the crazy miracle of music: that it has physical and chemical and neurological effects. It’s incredibly powerful.” And, she says, “If my brain has been helped through my former life and my history, then wow, what a thing.”
Burton-Hill was raised by a single mother, Gillian Hawser, a casting agent, in Hammersmith, west London, with two older half-brothers. (She only got to know her father, Humphrey Burton, a former head of BBC music and arts, in her twenties.) She began asking for a violin at the age of two after watching a violinist performing in a carol service on television. When the pestering proved to be more than a whim, Hawser gave in. A family friend recommended the Suzuki method and – after initially “putting in calls to random motorbike dealerships” – Hawser signed up her daughter with Helen Brunner, a pioneer of the technique in Europe.
Burton-Hill won scholarships to elite London schools St Paul’s and Westminster, studied at the Royal College of Music and, in her spare time, deejayed at parties and acted, appearing in Midsomer Murders and the miniseries Party Animals, alongside Matt Smith and Andrea Riseborough. She was talented enough to become a professional musician but chose instead to study English at Cambridge, where she got a double first.
After graduation, alongside writing novels and journalism she began presenting television coverage of prestige arts events such as the Proms. “I’ve always done lots of different things, but they’re all connected – it’s all about communicating,” she says. “I’m just a worker. I don’t know what I am if I’m not working. But I’m so lucky because my work is indivisible from my passions.”
She met her husband, James Roscoe, a diplomat, in Sierra Leone in 2006. He was on a posting there and she was on assignment for a newspaper. They lived in New York from 2009 until 2013, when he was posted to the UN. After five years back in London, they returned to New York in 2018 for her role at WQXR.
The impact of her injury on their family life has, of course, been colossal. But, says Burton-Hill, “There’s no point dwelling on what might have been. I’m so lucky to be alive. If it had happened the week before I would not be, because I’d have been on a plane. And I think that’s been very clarifying for me and probably for James as well.” His attitude is, she says, “ ‘We are so lucky. Just get on with it.’ He’s incredibly empathetic, but very practical. He’s very grounded.” In explaining her AVM to their sons, “Nothing is off limits. We always encourage that we talk about it,” she says.
The US travel ban introduced during the pandemic was lifted only in November, meaning she has not seen any of her family since March 2020. When we speak, her mother is due to visit just before Christmas, when Roscoe will take the boys to see his family in Wales. “I can’t be on my own, so someone has to stay with me.”
She’s grateful now that she’s not the sort of person who needs to feel particularly in control of her future. “I’ve never planned my life. I’ve never set a goal; the only goals I think about are for Arsenal. And I think that’s helpful, in the sense that a different person might feel they needed to try to control this.” However, she admits to neglecting her rehabilitation physiotherapy. “I’ve never been an exercising person and they’re like, ‘Just do the f***ing exercises.’ I’ll be like, ‘Yes, but come on, I’m sure there’s a hack that I can use…’ And then I’ll go to my appointment and they’ll say, ‘There’s total atrophy on your right side.’ In a way it’s quite comforting that I’m still myself. I’m still the person that doesn’t do the homework and wings it.”
While brain surgery saved her life, it did not remove the AVM or render it benign; a course of radiotherapy since has hopefully done so, though she won’t know for at least another 18 months, as her doctors need to wait for three years post-radiotherapy before they can re-examine the AVM. In the meantime it is a life without flights or wine. “Obviously that is sad on many levels, but I’m not going to ruminate. I’m trying to think of it all as a bit of a wonder, a mystery that could be interesting, rather than, ‘This is shit.’
“The idea that it is coming up to two years is wild to me. I think I’m feeling slightly better than last year – I have a bit more mobility, a bit more speech – but talk to me on the day and who knows?”
She is astonishingly sanguine. “What happened was not any person’s fault. And I think that has meant there’s no recrimination or guilt or ‘if only’. And who am I going to get angry at? I don’t do ‘the universe’ or God, so what’s the point?
“I’m not trying to say I’m a Zen person who’s like, ‘There’s no anger,’ ” she clarifies. “No. There’s rage, railing at things or against myself, like, ‘Why can’t I do my exercises?’ But I think that I’m just doing this at my pace, and according to my priorities and who I was and who I still am.”
Clemency Burton-Hill’s playlist for classical virgins
On the Nature of Daylight – Orchestra Version by Max Richter The actress Elisabeth Moss, of The Handmaid’s Tale fame, starred in a video for this track when it was re-released in a 15th-anniversary version. She admitted, “My work has been inspired by his music for so many years and not a day goes by on set where I don’t have Max’s music playing in my ears before a take.” Like the very greatest works of art, it contains multitudes: beauty and grief, love and loss, interiority and presence; everything.
Reverie by Angela Morley Morley was born Walter Stott, underwent gender reassignment surgery in 1972. She went on to become an important figure in 20th-century British music across multiple genres, including TV shows and film scores, and became the arranger of choice for leading singers of the day including Shirley Bassey and Dusty Springfield. Aas well as winning two Emmy awards, Morley made history in 1974 when she became the first openly transgender person to be nominated for an Oscar.
Shelter Island by Xavier Dubois Foley When, in the summer of 2021, a young American violinist called Randall Goosby released his debut album, Roots, it was a landmark event in classical circles. In this new work by his friend, double bassist and composer Xavier Dubois Foley, the title pays tribute to the secluded, sylvan island on the eastern end of Long Island, New York, where they spent time at the famed Perlman Music Program as even younger string players.
Widerstehe doch der Sünde, BWV 54 (transcribed by Vikingur Olafsson) by Johann Sebastian Bach This is Bach’s first extant church cantata for voice, written for alto solo and likely to have been performed for the first time in Weimar in July 1714. Based on a text from the Epistle of St James, it kicks off with an unexpected note of dissonance that immediately grabs your attention and sustains it throughout the whole gorgeous thing. The Bach musicologist and expert Alfred Dürr says that the aria “calls for resistance”.
Cello Sonata in G Minor, Op. 19: III. Andante by Sergei Rachmaninoff I love nothing more than hearing brand new things. And sources of new music can come from all sorts of places: a recommendation from a friend, a serendipitous algorithmic nudge, a radio programme or podcast, a fleeting reference in a book. In this case, it was a moment in Patrick Gale’s lovely 2018 novel Take Nothing With You. At one point, Gale’s main character, Eustace, a young cellist, is learning this piece, and his teacher declares: “Regret.” The whole movement expresses regret. One day you’ll understand the kind of thing he means but for now just, well, think of how you feel when you remember a perfect day that you can never, ever have again.
Plan & Elevation: IV. The Orangery by Caroline Shaw Aged 30, Shaw became the youngest recipient of the Pulitzer prize for music. This was composed two years later, while she was the inaugural music fellow at Dumbarton Oaks, the historic estate in Georgetown, Washington DC, which played host to the famous 1944 conference that led eventually to the foundation of the United Nations. The string quartet from which this comes was commissioned to mark the 75th anniversary of that momentous event.
Ave generosa by Hildegard von Bingen The polymath Christian visionary, medic, writer, poet, composer and very early feminist Hildegard of Bingen was just a young girl when her parents offered her up to the church, as was apparently the custom for the tenth child in a family. Having experienced visions since she was three years old, she was sent to a remote hilltop monastery called Disibodenberg where she was to spend almost 40 years sequestered with a group of other nuns in a stone cell, away from the monks. Sometime after 1136 she began producing music, presumably for her fellow nuns. Hildegard’s music is characterised by an almost improvisatory melodic freedom, creating an ethereal sound world that points far forward into the distant future.
Eve by Amelia Warner Amelia Warner started her professional life as an actor in a number of high-profile TV dramas and films, but has, in the past few years, returned to her first love: music. This comes from Warner’s 2017 EP, Visitors, each track of which is based on a fictional female character. She plays piano and organ on the record, which is also scored for violin, viola, cello and double bass. “Visitors is about an imaginary house where all these women once lived,” she explains. “The energy left there after they have gone. I wanted it to sound like music upstairs floating down a stairwell.”
Castor et Pollux, RCT 32, Acte I, Scène III: Prélude – Air accompagné “Tristes apprets” by Jean-Philippe Rameau Rameau is one of the most significant figures in the history and development of opera. A composer, harpsichordist and music theorist, he succeeded Jean-Baptiste Lully as the de facto king of French opera, ushering in a new harmonic boldness and style that appalled the so-called “Lullistes” and delighted his own ardent fans, the so-called “Rameauners”. This utterly spellbinding passage is from the 1737 opera Castor and Pollux, which is based on the myth of twin brothers, one of whom is immortal, and the princess they both love, Télaïre.
Ceffylau by Catrin Finch & Seckou Keita I was positively thunderstruck when I first heard the unique partnership between celebrated Welsh harpist Catrin Finch and Senegalese kora virtuoso Seckou Keita. Combine the harp with a kora, a traditional West African instrument that can have 21 or 22 strings, and bam: a kind of enchantment happens. An effusive joy. The sound of two spectacularly musical cultures, separated by about 3,000 miles, a few countries and lots of ocean, coming together to produce something impossible to pigeonhole, boundary-hopping, relevant and, dare I say it, totally new. Another Year of Wonder: Classical Music for Every Day by Clemency Burton-Hill (£20, Headline Home) is out now