With my grandmother, the concert violinist `Daisy Kennedy
When I was born I was separated from my mother from day 4 because she had a catastrophic post puerperal depression. This was very sad for her, me and my dad and had far reaching implications on my development. However I believe, it was the very lack of initial connection to my mother that led me early on to develop neuro pathways which made me into a composer. This is because composing music is all about creating connection between notes and sounds so what I lacked on a human level I compensated for with composition.From age 3, I was composing. My grandmother gave me a key coloured glockenspiel which may have led to my my synaesthesia, seeing colours in notes. This is why I also find connection between composing and painting. In addition I may have developed my intuitive musicality due to my genetic inheritance. My cousin is Nigel Kennedy and my grandmother was the concert violinist, Daisy Kennedy.
With Nigel Kennnedy, my cousin
The gene AVPR1A on chromosome 12q has been implicated in music perception, music memory, and music listening, whereas SLC6A4 on chromosome 17q has been associated with music memory and choir participation. Both nature (a predisposition for music) and nurture (musical training) are believed to “establish a neural foundation for musicality,”. Researchers have observed structures in the infant brain that may serve as a scaffold upon which ongoing musical experience can build.
With my Dad
Becoming a composer was also due to the empowerment that my Dad gave me. He had a sense of play and fun that brought me into the presence of a life in which I was allowed to develop traditionally male traits such as being a tomboy, playing football, fishing and going on adventures. However in many respects I was made by my parents to play out my childish life as a very conventional girl. I am grateful for the ballet! Today, I could have easily been a candidate for gender re-assignment. But the truth is that I was just a girl who wanted to be doing exciting things that men did, like compose!
The function of synapses in the brain provides a platform on which to compositionally further engage with my fascination with the nature of random systems. Synapses simultaneously demonstrate a state of chaos that interface with their own unique sense of formality. This process connects with my eclectic methodology of compositional quilting in which abstract shapes can be contained and even made sense of within a grid. I find it extraordinary that this tangle of synapses is the epicentre of human thought and memory! The Psychologist Anthony Storr contextualises their paradox in the following way:
Music plays a special role in aiding the scanning and sorting process which goes on when we are asleep or simply day dreaming.
Anthony Storr: Music and The Mind. p. 107
