Today at the Con, Italian composer Ezio Bosso spoke at a seminar for composition students. Readers of Limelight may recognise his name from Emma Kean’s March article on the Sydney Dance Company. Ezio has collaborated with choreographer Rafael Bonachela on LANDforms, a new work that will be premiered by the SDC later this month.

Ezio spoke about the process of collaboration, as well as his approaches to finding inspiration for his compositions. One central message of his talk was that “we find ourselves through collaboration”. He urged us to never avoid collaborating – explaining that you will learn nothing if you confine yourself to your desk and your score.

I wholeheartedly agree with Ezio’s sentiments. I recall that when I started telling friends about my decision to return to uni to study composition, I was occasionally asked whether a degree was really necessary to be a composer. And, while the answer is probably “no”, I had no doubt that immersing myself in a collaborative environment would be far more beneficial than reading scores, listening widely, and working in private. But, I digress.

A former pupil of Phillip Glass, Ezio has worked in film as well as dance. He discussed one of the challenges associated with the former: dealing with film producers. On one occasion, he found himself having to respond to a producer who requested that the music accompanying a particular scene be more “yellow”. Further complicating this request, Ezio explained, was that he “suffers” synesthesia.

If you’re not familiar with the term, synesthesia is the rare condition that causes one sense to stimulate another. In the case of sound to colour synesthesia, different sounds trigger visions of different colours. Franz Liszt was known to have the condition.

However, I had never met a synesthete and it was surprising to hear Ezio use the word “suffer” in this context. The experience of synesthesia, to me, is nearly incomprehensible, but I would have expected it to be rather pleasant and extremely useful for a musician. According to Ezio, though, listening to music can be quite painful. The only way he is able to enjoy music is to be directly involved in its creation – either as a composer or a performer (he also plays the double bass).

There is plenty of information about synesthesia available online. You might find this video interesting as an overview.