By definition a synesthete experiences synesthesia, a condition in which usually separate senses are intertwined. For instance, a person with synesthesia might see colors when they hear music, associate specific tastes with certain words, or perceive numbers and letters as having distinct colors or personalities. This blending of senses is involuntary and varies widely in form and intensity among individuals.
Synesthesia can make for a richly textured perceptual experience. Musicians, artists, and writers with synesthesia sometimes draw inspiration from their unique sensory crossovers. Although rare, synesthesia is a fascinating and benign condition that provides unique insights into how the human brain processes sensory information.
Suzette Embertons is a polyglot. She plays piano, woodwinds, saxophone, and acoustic guitar. She also composes for the Inversion Ensemble and writes lyrics, putting poetry to music (even from foreign languages – Baudelaire and Romain as two examples) as well as writing original text for three compositions. She’s currently on her fourth has created much more for Inversion since 2018. She calls herself an “oddball” because of all the Inversion composers, she’s the only one without a music degree. But who cares with all her talent?; she’s been playing music since she was a child. As her day job; she’s a software engineer.
Suzette: I grew up listening to 80s rock. Yeah, I learned everything just by hearing it. And then thought, okay, time to learn how to read music, so I took piano lessons for reading. The first composition I wrote was for piano and was based on a text by Hildegard of Bingen. I wrote a piece for four-part women’s voices with piano. And Inversion performed that. And Chorus Austin performed it as well.
Sun News: So were you a perfect pitch kind of student? Could you say, that’s a C, that is an A major or an F minor, just hearing it?”
Suzette: Yes, I learned from my dad. I don’t remember not being able to do it. Because my dad had that ability. He played guitar beautifully, and had a fabulous tenor voice. My brain just retains what the sounds.
Sun News: Are the colors you see when you strike a note wider than our vision? Or the chakra colors? Can you see all the colors?
Suzette: It’s more like certain chords have colors, and songs have colors. One of the other Inversion singers also has synesthesia, which is crazy. Two of us in one ensemble. We compare colors, and they don’t match. And it’s very funny. My note is D major and its color is a deep, turquoise. And there are shades, like, darker colors would correspond to darker sounds and darker colors; major colors would be, G major and is yellow. F is purple.
Sun News: Who else do you perform with these days?
Suzette: Another group called Panoramic Voices. Choral, classical (more chamber than operatic), and then a handful of other rock gigs on the side, and I’m singing in an Inversion quartet at the Opera Austin Festival.
Sun News: Tell us about your process of writing and composing.
Suzette: Most pieces that I write contain different sections. It’s not just a verse that repeats a few variations, so I’ll write the text on paper before the music that follows the text. The text tells me what the music wants to be. Then I’ll see if there are reflections of a story, like if this text is creating a mood or what this is doing.
Sun News: What does your future hold? Full-time composing?
Suzette: A project for next year is called Enchanted Forest. It’s reimagined fairy tales for a string quartet and a professional choir group. And I’m writing an adaptation of an old Scottish fairy tale called Buried Moon. And that’s going to be performed in June. A visual artist is creating a storyboard for the stage. They’re illustrating the characters and stories in the fairy tales. And the text is going to be displayed on the wall.
I am writing all the text and lyrics for this. It’s a challenge because I’m writing for strings for the first time, but it’s a solvable problem. I would like to be able to write for a full orchestra.
Sun News: The last questions are like fill-in-the-blank questions with one-word answers. Are you ready? Here goes:
Suzette’s color: Blue, the deep turquoise. The D note.
Suzette’s musical style: Fresh.
Suzette’s soul: A modern life.
Suzette as an artist or painter? A stick figure.
Suzette as a season: Autumn
You can find more information about Suzette Emberton at www.facebook.com/SuzetteEmberton or www.linkedin.com/in/suzetteemberton