I play music because it feels amazing. Chords have colours, shapes, and emotions — and playing with top musicians in flow makes them shine brighter. 

Top quality performance takes discipline, focus, and flow — the state where challenge becomes joy.

Right now, I’m enjoying improvising in flow with my new group, Collectif: Arc en Ciel. It’s a musical meditation or conversation in nature: responding to each other and to nature itself: sonic forest bathe.

This started after guitarist Caspar Hawksley and I improvised for years on tour as ‘Colours of Home’ - an engaging neurodiversity-awareness show for Musica Viva in Schools that reached thousands of young children across Australia. They always said how our music made them feel calm and peaceful.

“Music and rhythm find their way into the secret places of the soul...” Plato

With my recent Biennial Artist support from Create SA, we decided to take it a bit further artistically, to see what would happen. We brought in two expert collaborators: Thomas Marlin cello and Harrison Smith on flugelhorn.

As Collectif: Arc en Ciel, we’ve used the name and image of a rainbow to encourage us to look up, beyond the horizon and to represent synesthesia or neurodiversity. This is a unique, South Australian artistic collaboration producing ‘in the moment’ musical experiences.

It’s good for us all - players and audience - because listening to evolving music stimulates the brain’s default network, the engine of creativity and problem-solving. This gives the brain’s so-called, busy executive network, a rare break from the constant ping of modern life. 

Researchers at Harvard say:

“Sound processing begins in the brainstem, which also controls the rate of your heartbeat and respiration… relaxing music may lower heart rate, breathing rate, and blood pressure — and also seems to ease pain, stress, and anxiety.”

And University of Nevada goes even further:

“Music is effective for relaxation and stress management… listening to music seems to be able to change brain functioning to the same extent as medication..." 

You can try this effect, because we’re just releasing our debut improvised album.

Live improvisation goes further than familiar music because by hinting at potential choices and surprises, improv keeps the brain alert, through following the unpredicatble narrative, stimulating and expanding our neural pathways. 

“Improvisation is not the expression of accident … rather of the accumulated yearnings, dreams and wisdom of our very soul.” Yehudi Menuhin

And for synesthetes like me — George Gershwin, Duke Ellington, Rimsky-Korsakov, Quincy Jones, Miriam Hyde — hearing music also brings a vivid palette: 

“When I create music, it’s not just a form of art, it is art...” Quincy Jones

I recognised this state when I was reading through composer Miriam Hyde’s letters: a colourful, neurodivergent mind in full flow, anxiety stilled by music. 

Which made me ask: in a stressed world, why not use live music more often as therapy? It’s a proven, non-medical way to slow down, connect, and recover.

Our therapeutic album, Chromaesthesia (released on 19 September 2025), was improvised and recorded live at Adelaide Botanic Gardens, surrounded by endangered plants while having live interactions with crickets and birds. For an hour!

As well as relaxing, you’ll be gently following the evolving narrative - and enjoying an hour with no distracting notifications – which is also, super helpful for the brain.

“…improvisation is motion — you keep going forward, fearful or not, living from moment to moment. That’s how life is.” Bobby McFerrin

With Collectif: Arc en Ciel, we take time to gradually evolve, to resolve into the key of now.

And while we play, anxiety vanishes, as the brain resets to creative mode.