Programme
- Clara Simpson broke two vertebrae in a car crash on the A57 Snake Pass on 1 March 2025 while travelling to her first day teaching at Sheffield Music Academy.
- The then 26-year-old spent ten days in hospital after the car hit ice and flipped onto its roof.
- Simpson, now 28, has returned to playing the cello after fearing the injury had ended her career.
Cellist Clara Simpson is playing again after a car crash on the A57 Snake Pass left her with two fractured vertebrae and a ten-day hospital stay, according to BBC News.
Simpson was travelling from Manchester to Sheffield on 1 March 2025 for her first day in a teaching role at Sheffield Music Academy when the car in which she was a passenger hit a large patch of ice and flipped onto its roof. The crash left the then 26-year-old hospitalised for ten days.
"It was the most terrifying experience of my life," Simpson, now 28, told BBC News. "When I was told I'd broken my neck, I genuinely thought everything I'd worked so hard for was over."
Simpson's recovery has now brought her back to the instrument. The cellist is performing once again, a turnaround she described to BBC News after fearing the injury had ended her career before it had fully begun.
The crash occurred on one of the Peak District's most notorious routes. Snake Pass, which links Manchester and Sheffield, is frequently closed in winter conditions. Simpson was heading to Sheffield Music Academy to take up her first teaching post when the accident happened.
Her return to playing marks the close of a recovery that began with the prospect of permanent injury. A broken neck, in the language of her own account, threatened everything she had built as a musician.
Simpson's story, first reported by BBC News and picked up by Slippedisc, ends with the cellist back at her instrument. For the Sheffield Music Academy teacher, the hardest passage of her career now sits behind her, and the repertory ahead.
Original: bbc.co.uk
