By Janine Gastineau
For the Camera

To 16-year-old Anna Lindemann, pattern is everything. Since early childhood, the Boulder high school sophomore has been drawn to patterns, discovering them in music, science and art, and rearranging and manipulating them to create everything from whimsical, wearable art to surprisingly sophisticated classical music.

This weekend, the gifted artist, dancer and composer since age 8 will unveil her latest creation: the score to Storybook Ballet's production of "Persephone," onstage at the Dairy Center Dance Space in Boulder.

IF YOU GO WHAT: Storybook Ballet's production of "Persephone" WHEN: 7 p.m. Friday and Saturday; 2 p.m. Sunday WHERE: Dance Space, Dairy Center for the Arts, 2590 Walnut St. TICKETS: $10 adults; $7 seniors and children under 12 CALL: (303) 449-7856

"There is an overwhelming number of gifted performers, which is kind of demoralizing," says Anna. "But there aren't as many people who compose. I like to think I bring something artistically to the world through my compositions."

Anna's composition, "Garden Suite," a series of short piano pieces about vegetables and insects, garnered her an award in 1999 from the Music Teacher's National Association. Storybook Ballet director Ana Claire, Anna's ballet teacher, used several movements from that work at a Ballet Arts spring recital, and went on to commission Anna to write the "Persephone" score.

The score, Anna's first for chamber ensemble (violin, cello, clarinet, trumpet and percussion), so impressed Boulder Philharmonic concertmaster Gregory Walker that he assembled a group of professional musicians for the production.

"Persephone" chronicles the story of Demeter, goddess of nature, and her beloved daughter, Persephone, who is kidnapped by Hades, god of the underworld. Demeter's grief turns the world barren, and people everywhere are starving to death when Zeus steps in to save the planet.

Anna's father, Eric Lindemann, who also began composing as a child, was still in junior high when he began attending music classes at the University of Southern California. A jazz pianist, he also played on film scores, and toured professionally with several pop groups . Now Eric designs musical programs and machines and has been his daughter's primary music instructor.

He nurtured Anna's love for music early on, playing musical improvisation games at the keyboard with her when she was 5 years old.

"She'd be the woodland creature, walking up the high part of the keyboard with her hand, and I'd be the mean wolf, and catch her," he says.

Improvisation progressed to weekly piano lessons, with her father and other teachers, at age 6. Still today, Anna and her father spend about an hour per day, five days a week, at the piano.

Both parents began noticing their daughter's exceptional musical gifts when she was around age 8.

"Anna started composing little pieces and could play a number of melodies, which Eric transcribed," says Anna's mother, graphic designer Bonnie Mettler. "A few were quite catchy, not 'nursery rhyme-y.' We started recording them, because it was fun."

At age 9, Eric recalls, "She spontaneously drew some squares, like a grid, and put different note names, A, B, C, etc, into each square ... then took a diagonal line and played those on the piano." What Anna had playfully stumbled onto, mathematically ordering note sequences, just happened to be a common composing exercise for world class, 20th century classical composers like Pierre Boulez.

"One of her strengths is enjoying and playing with musical patterns in an experimental way," Eric says . "Anna likes numeric patterns, inverting and playing forms backward. She's an inventor."

That creativity of thought and love of design expressed itself in academics too, says Sharon Sikura, who taught Anna for three years at Summit Middle School.

Sikura recalls a science fair project Anna did.

She took a colorful artistic rendering of a gel matrix — the substrate used for DNA fingerprinting — and the accompanying article from an analytical chemistry journal, and spent 120 hours in a lab trying to recreate similar, and different, patterns using various chemicals.

"Sadly, her project didn't do very well at the fair, but that's because I believe it was beyond most of the judges," Sikura says.

On her own, Anna wrote to the MIT scientist behind the original study, physics professor Toyoichi Tanaka, who was so impressed by her perspective that he re-examined his original experiment, based on what Anna had seen through hers.

"Anna was 12 then," Sikura recalls. "It was unbelievable."

The things Anna does for fun are equally impressive. She has a wardrobe of three-dimensional construction paper hats and paper dresses that she makes for special occasions.

She listens to everything from Broadway musicals to gospel and jazz, and names Igor Stravinsky as one of her favorite composers.

But these days, she's spending most of her time taking dance class and practicing her small dance role in "Persephone." Though she loves dancing, she won't be making a career of it.

"There's a lot of disturbing hierarchy, some dancers have eating disorders, and I'm not really good at motivating myself in class," she says. "I really love performing, but sometimes the rehearsal process is grueling."

Besides, Anna says she thinks her future lies elsewhere: She plans to keep writing music.

"I like that in composing, you have a final product. When I was little, I wanted to write a musical," she says. "And I want to try new approaches, to develop a longer piece, with a clear form and surprises. If the audience knows what's coming up, you might as well not do it."

June 4, 2002

E-mail this story to a friend | Printer-friendly version