LKR's Favorites
Candy: Lindt 85% dark chocolate
Musical Key: D-flat
Travels: Gig Harbor, WA / Asheville, NC / Boston, MA / Champery, Switzerland / Seefeld, Austria
Musicians: Stephen Sondheim, Billy Joel, Tori Amos, Rachmaninoff, Alanis Morissette, Cake, Queen
Authors: Susan Howatch, Madeleine L'Engle, Robert A. Johnson, J. K. Rowling, 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, listen to Laura's interview on NPR, or simply run an Internet search on "synesthesia."
Click here to see an MRI photo of Laura's brain! The red and yellow spots show the areas that are active in Laura's synesthesic perceptions.
Bio
Laura Kathryn Rosser was born May 6, 1982, in Knoxville, TN, where it was clear from an early age 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, 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, 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 100-year-old house she refers to affectionately as Wisteria Heights. 
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!" Music arranger and Wannabeatles drummer David Toledo 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!"
After spending four years as a Nashville musician, Laura sensed that it was time for her to re-enter the academic arena. She had long been fascinated by personality psychology, but had not considered studying it formally until she discovered that nearby Vanderbilt University offered an interdisciplinary program in Religion, Psychology and Culture (RPC). First entering as a master's student in August 2008, Laura was accepted into the RPC Ph.D. program the following year and anticipates earning her doctorate by May 2014. Her tentative dissertation plan is to research the connections between creativity, spirituality, and mental illness—a topic that stems from the people and experiences in her life and is especially relevant to the artistic community.
The hardest part of graduate school for Laura has been the necessity of temporarily paring down her musical involvement. However, she still teaches private music students, 
serves as the Worship Accompanist at McKendree Village Retirement Community, helps coordinate the Care Partners ministry of Belmont United Methodist Church, and is available to perform concerts during the summer months and around Christmastime. Laura also now offers therapeutic counseling sessions as part of her RPC clinical work. Eventually, she believes her ministry will blend elements of music, teaching, counseling, writing, and consulting as she seeks to fulfill her personal vision "to be an instrument through which God increases the love, joy, healing, and beauty in the world."
Laura would love to hear from you. For booking, correspondence, or to receive periodic email newsletters, please contact her at laurakrosser@gmail.com. You can also become her fan on Facebook.