My name is Aurora Sánchez Sousa. I am a microbiologist/ Micologist and responsible for this MUSIC + SCIENCE fusion ("Genoma Music").
Anybody who knows me and wants to stress a certain character trait of mine, must without a doubt mention my love for music, so that it is easy for people close to me to hear me say at times that I cannot conceive life without it.

This work clearly reflects the fusion of the two areas where I move: first, the scientific arena where I have worked for over 25 years, my professional responsibility. Here I find a source of information as well as the advice from experts in the field.

The second area is the musical area, my devotion, which takes up majority of my free time.

"GENOMA MUSIC " is the result of adding up the scientific field plus the musical field plus a certain dose of creativity.

First of all, I would like to thank those people who have participated in any way in this project, with their collaboration, ideas or support: Concha Hernández Chico, Fernando Baquero and César Nombela, all of them highly qualified in the scientific field. I would also like to thank musician Richard Krull, my work colleague and in the recording studio, for providing spirit and creativity, until the 10 tracks comprising this record were composed.

I would like to specially thank the Pasteur Institute of Paris (where I completed my career specialty) for giving me the opportunity to release "Genoma Music in March 2001, during the posthumous homage to Prof. Edouard Drouhet, and to all the persons who during the last two years have contributed with their support and help to make this project come true.

Just like a key can be transported an eigth higher or lower, the art of composing music means to me a state of transportation to other out of the ordinary sensory levels or dimensions. Music acts as a wonderful and healthy “elixir”, which raises and maintains the levels of happiness, and, as a result, may even boost the body´s immune system. Musical creativity serves as a means of communicating many sensations and feelings, which are then understandable for different people without the need for translation, such as love, sadness, desperation... hope.

Despite its evolution, science represents to me a world always awaiting to be discovered. An enigmatic, microscopic, revealing world, which requires a great deal of patience and calmness and which has always fulfilled me.

Bringing music closer to science in "Genoma Music", by using a scale of only four keys representing the letters that form genomic sequences, has posed a very pleasant yet surprising challenge.

The first person to use four keys (representing the four letters forming his last name) was Johann Sebastian BACH. These keys are sometimes by themselves, other times they cross, repeat, multiply, change harmonies, thus creating “variations”, and were later a source of inspiration for other composers such as Haendel, Mozart or Beethoven. This last composer gave the variations a musical value that nobody had achieved since Bach.

A musical sequence and a genetic sequence are basic organized elements which acquire a meaning when being interpreted. If music is one of the most important means of communication, and the expression of each gene creates a protein playing a particular role in the process of life, we surely are trying to communicate via music “something” included in everything that represents life.

Aurora Sánchez Sousa