A young, up-and-coming composer, Jacqueline Cordes has a hidden superpower. Her synaesthesia means she senses the world differently, and that comes through in the uniqueness of her work.

By Graeme Smith

“My synaesthesia definitely comes into play often while composing,” she says of her ‘superpower.’ “For one thing, I always know if I’m changing the musical feel in the middle of a piece, since the colour will change or disappear. I also think the colours encourage me to create a variety of musical environments and even sometimes write in genres I never would have thought to write in otherwise.”

It was at the end of 2024 that we first featured her music through her dark and atmospheric album, Singularity. Now she’s back with a new piece called Illusions of Amethyst, taken from her upcoming album, Frozen Star. I asked her how it was conceived and recorded.

“Even before I wrote a note of Illusions of Amethyst, I knew I wanted it to be purple,” she says. “I’d written down in my song ideas list to write a purple piece for choir and orchestra, with bells in the background and an overall magical sound to it.

“For most of the tracks on both Singularity and Frozen Star, I’ve been designing what I want the musical atmosphere to be like before I start writing, and then I bring those musical worlds to life one by one without needing inspiration from movies or books like I used to,” says Cordes. “For recording my tracks, I use Logic Pro, Cinematic Studio for the orchestra, and the choir is made up of many overlayed recordings of my voice.”

A suitably cinematic composition is paired with a narrative-driven video. While the instrumental is rich with a looping piano melody and ghostly vocalisations, the video unfolds showing a puppeteer putting the finishing touches on his creations. Like Pinocchio, one comes to life and we see the world through their eyes.

All the while, Cordes’s music stirs, bringing to mind the Gothic wonder of a Danny Elfman soundtrack. Things end low and lingering as the final twist in the video’s tale is revealed.

On the video, Cordes says: “I’ve always loved creating stories. To this day, I come up with stories every night while going to sleep, and it was the same process coming up with this narrative. As for why creepy puppets, let’s just say I have a seven-foot-tall horror animatronic at home, so it’s just very me.

“Putting the video together was challenging, and working with AI to create something like this is much harder than one might think. It took me hundreds of generations just to create a three minute video; 95% of it was complete nonsense. I often needed to edit photos in Photoshop and feed it back into the system to deal with things like ‘the six-finger problem’ – that would make a great band name, by the way. My upcoming video is more ambitious, and I’m finding I need to scrap an even higher percentage of it.”

The track and video proves a compelling taste of what’s to come from Frozen Star, and Cordes was only too happy to talk about the album.

“Frozen Star is my most colourful album yet, with eight different colours!” she exclaims. “And of course, each of the tracks creates a specific musical atmosphere. Listeners will laugh, they’ll cry, and they’ll get spooked.

“Singularity was a journey across time, ranging from the ancient past to the future, while Frozen Star is a journey through colour. I like to think of them as two halves of a double-album that introduces listeners to the Chromaverse and takes them on a tour of distinct musical worlds.”

Music composition isn’t the only string to Jacqueline Cordes’s bow and I asked her about her other talents, and what she ultimately hoped to do with them.

“My dream is a career in film music, but I do have an endless list of other interests,” she says. “For example, sooner or later, I plan to finish and publish a manga-style graphic novel that I’ve been working on for years. It takes place in the year 2086, and my friends joke that by the time I finish it, it will be about the present day.”

In the nearer future, she’ll be releasing an official soundtrack for a short film called Three Angles. She’s also planning on creating full music videos for all of the tracks on Frozen Star and Singularity.

“I can’t stop writing music,” she adds, “so I’m already getting started on my third album, which will be my first that’s completely made up of songs – with actual singing and lyrics. I’m not sure what to call the album yet; if it’s anything like my past albums, maybe I should go with Get Spooked.”

I’m certainly looking forward to hearing it. In the meantime, we can have our whistles whetted for Frozen Star by Illusions of Amethyst. The track is out now and you can give it a listen below.