LKR's Favorites
Candy: Lindt 85% dark chocolate
Musical Key: D-flat
Travels: London, Paris, Switzerland, Austria, Ukraine, New York, Boston
Musicians: Stephen Sondheim, Billy Joel, Tori Amos, Rachmaninoff, Alanis Morissette, Cake, Queen
Authors: Madeleine L'Engle, Robert A. Johnson, Susan Howatch, Thomas Moore, Julia Cameron, M. Scott Peck, Joanna Trollope 
Synesthesia
means "the combining of the senses." Synesthetes (people with synesthesia) may see colored letters, numbers, music, or auras around people; taste shapes; smell personalities; or have complex visualization systems for time or mathematics. Many musicians, artists, and writers throughout history—from Scriabin to Nabokov to John Mayer—have had synesthesia.
Scientists are gaining understanding of how synesthesia operates within the brain by studying synesthetes like Laura. To learn more, click here or visit the links on the News page.
Bio
Laura Kathryn Rosser was born May 6, 1982, in Knoxville, TN, where her parents and many extended family members live. From an early age, it was clear that music was in her blood. Her mother Robin says that as a baby, Laura "started humming on pitch before she could speak." "She was a scary first child to have," quips her father, Mark. "You'd pick her up and she'd start humming 'Jesus Loves Me'—on key!"
Laura—or Katy, as she was called as a child—soon acquired a local reputation as a piano prodigy. 
She played piano by ear as well as by reading music, started accompanying choirs in the second grade, and gave her first public recital at age eleven. At that point her piano teacher, prolific composer and concert artist Mary McDonald, sent her on to study with a classical piano professor at the nearby University of Tennessee.
But instead of pursuing a classical career, Laura sensed a calling to use her music for ministry. A Christian from an early age (she notes that she grew up "on church pews and piano benches"), she found inspiration and encouragement at a Tennessee Baptist music camp she attended each summer. There she also met Dr. Chris Alford, at that time the music minister at Smithwood Baptist Church, who hired her to be their staff pianist—at the age of fourteen!
After graduating from Knoxville's Central High School in 2000, Laura moved to Nashville to attend Belmont University with her way paid by a presidential scholarship. She describes those four years as "absolutely wonderful. 
I loved college. Between the friends and professors, the Honors Program, getting to design my major, leading campus groups, and living in Nashville, I couldn't have asked for a better experience." Laura quickly became involved in campus activities by serving as shepherd for Belmont Wesley Fellowship, poetry editor for the Belmont Literary Journal (which published several of her own poems), and director of a gospel choir called Chadasha. It's no surprise, then, that upon graduation she was selected as the recipient of the 2004 Belmont Alumni Award.
Meanwhile, she was already in the process of producing her second CD. Laura recorded her first album, the all-piano Tapestries of Grace, in Fall 2002 at Nashville's Sound Emporium. "I had hoped that sometime during my time at Belmont I would get to record a CD of original hymn arrangements," she said. "One day I realized that the resources were all around me, but I had to take action. The project was truly a 'God thing' and couldn't have happened without the many friends who helped me turn a list of songs into a finished product." Her second album, Live at Belmont Mansion, is a recording of a worship concert she gave in March 2004 at the conclusion of her senior thesis project.
By now Laura had come to consider herself a Nashvillian. 
In May 2004 she received her B.A. in ministry with a piano minor and began a new chapter of life in a 98-year-old house she refers to affectionately as Wisteria Heights ("not to be confused with Wisteria Lane," she adds with a grin, citing the street on Desperate Housewives). There she began balancing freelance projects—writing teen Bible study guides for Thomas Nelson Publishers, producing a third CD called Laura's Christmas Creations, composing an Advent choral anthem that turned into a bestselling Christmas cantata co-written with her childhood piano teacher Mary McDonald—with part-time work as the staff accompanist for Harding Academy and East Brentwood Presbyterian Church and Junior Choristers Director for Church of the Advent.
Ever since high school, Laura has given piano concerts for churches, conferences, music clubs, and private events. She is known for presenting music of several different genres along with the ever-popular spontaneous medley of audience requests. "It's amazing," said one concert attendee in North Carolina. "You think there's no way she can get all those songs to fit together, and then somehow she does it!" David Toledo, music director at East Brentwood Presbyterian, says, "You see this small woman [Laura is 5'4"], but then you hear her play, and it's like she has a black belt in karate!"
It takes a black belt in piano to learn Rachmaninoff's infamous Third Piano Concerto, epitomized in the 1996 movie Shine 
and known as one of the most difficult pieces in all of piano repertoire. Laura performed the concerto's first movement with the Belmont University Orchestra in their March 2004 Classical Performers Concert, where six solo artists are selected annually by competition. "It was the hardest piece I've ever played," she says. "In a way, it was a test to see if I could succeed at classical piano without choosing 'the Juilliard route.' I used to feel a conflict between music ministry and piano performance. People told me you couldn't be a 'real' pianist without practicing eight hours a day, and I knew I had too many interests to give it that kind of focus. It was so affirming to realize that when our priorities are in place, God blesses that with results that are supposedly impossible."
What are her priorities? Laura cites being open to God's will, nurturing relationships with the people in her life, taking care of herself physically, and fulfilling her spiritual and musical calling. "Every week is different; there's never a boring day. I've been called to ministry, but my understanding of that calling has grown and changed through the years. Sometimes it means serving churches, sometimes it's loving children, sometimes it's treating people with integrity in business." She stays involved with the Nashville community 
as a member of Belmont United Methodist Church and its UMW Abigail Circle, the Spiritual Friends Network of Middle Tennessee, and the Belmont Young Alumni Council.
When she's not playing (or teaching) piano around Music City or on the road, you can find Laura journaling on her front porch swing, hosting an Artists' Group, learning the Alexander Technique, participating in synesthesia research at Vanderbilt, reading books at coffeeshops, relaxing at Wisteria Heights, or following the latest adventures of her 23-year-old brother Paul, who is a Chick-fil-A interim owner-operator in Delaware. Stay tuned for more updates about the next chapter of her story as she begins an M.A. in Religion, Psychology and Culture at Vanderbilt University in August 2008....