What is synaesthesia? How does it manifest itself in music makers and their listeners? Jansson J. Antmann talks to leading expert Professor Anina Rich from Macquarie University to find out and uncovers the unique experiences of composer Alice Chance, oboist Celia Craig, Canberra Symphony Orchestra’s Chief Conductor Jessica Cottis and one of its subscribers, Shirley Allen.

Image © Noah Haggerty/Pixabay

When the composer Olivier Messiaen described his music using terms such as “gentle cascades for blue-orange chords” and “green spirals”, many dismissed it as poetic eccentricity. Yet for people with synaesthesia – a form of neurodiversity affecting around four percent of people, in which stimulation of one sense involuntarily triggers another – such cross-sensory experiences are very real. In the world of music, the perception of sound as colour, has long...