[Music] being able to be a musician what that has done for me is it's allowed me to freely express myself creatively in ways that words sometimes have not not the opportunity to to [Music] do I'm miky Johnson and I a Pianist [Music] composer with piano or music in general I started at the age of four The Story Goes that my mom one Sunday afternoon Was preparing the house for the week and usually uh she would turn the TV on and it would be on a classical music station at a particular time of the day and she usually would be fine with classical music and this particular Sunday she just was not here for it she wanted to hear something else and so she changed the channel and she started to hear me cry and at one point she was like is this a fluke or something and then she started testing it like going back and forth and she realized oh you really like this music and so she eventually took piano lessons to have me around the instrument and then I got my first keyboard at 6 years old um I destroyed that one and then two years later I got another keyboard and during that time I was learning music by air [Music] I would say I didn't realize that the idea of me playing by air and being able to replicate things and even recreate or create things was a form of composition this idea of improvisation I had no idea that was composition I in and of itself I just felt like if it wasn't written down then it wasn't a creative effort uh so I didn't really think of it as composition until way later in high school I think it's a little uncanny uh how my my Jamaican influence and upbringing really shaped how I would consider my musical sound and I think it's not different from anything that anybody else in the classical music realm has done and I I think a lot of these influences are influenced by not only their upbringing but also the way they speak and the way their um their rhythmic idiosyncrasies of speech influence also the way the music is written and I felt that it was just natural to me to do my version of that uh it's more significant for me in the sense that we don't get a lot of composers from Jamaica doing original music in that case usually it's a reinvention or a arrangement of folk songs that already exist but in terms of completely new material that's very few and far between it's very important that they see themselves represented and so they'll see that hey music is out here for us by us and it's not just for a certain group of people so that's that's the Legacy I want to leave for my Jamaican folks that there is music for them in the classical real it's not just regga our dance hall but we are also making strides in classical music as well for a very long time I thought that what existed was all white male the music that we've been told to learn which would be the standard repertoire had been people who have been predominantly white and male and it was not until recent years I realized that there was a ton of people who are African American there were a ton of composers who are africaribbean there are ton of composers who are women there are a ton of composers who are indigenous uh lgbtq it was I was like wait all of this does exist and none of this gets as much attention as predominantly while male success being able to do the things that you've always dreamed of I started wanting to just be solely a concert pianist that's the only goal I had you know fast forward uh opening my Avenues to composition that has springboarded my career much further than my piano career and that has opened doors you know as a result to my piano career and even more so heartwarming is to have people from my own country engaging with my music and Performing my music in the country you have your own composer who's from the land and you're engaging with their music and championing their music uh along with other composers who are are slowly emerging or are already established that's that's beyond all I could ever think or imagine [Music]