Emmy-Award-Winning Composer Develops Original Music Inspired by John Jay Student Poetry

Rae Ross ’25 recently had the exciting opportunity to create justice-focused poetry accompanied by original music from Emmy-award-winning film composer and music therapist Joseph Neidorf. “Working with Joseph was such a blessing,” says Ross. “It was a creative experience that I never imagined having.” Gina Rae Foster, Ph.D., director of the Teaching and Learning Center, and Neidorf spent a year brainstorming this innovative class where students researched and wrote poetry that influenced the composition of original music. “My job as a film composer hinges on translating an intimate, meticulous understanding of the characters so that the audience can viscerally inhabit the story,” says Neidorf. “That’s why I believe the success of these collaborations is owed to the exceptional quality of the relationships the four of us built with one another.” To build that collaborative connection, Neidorf and Crystal Leigh Endsley, Ph.D., professor of Africana Studies, met weekly with the students to delve into the motivations, desires, and challenges their subjects faced. The culmination of their work being original poetry and music. “What a gift and a transformative experience this was for our group of poet-scholars,” says Dr. Endsley. Here, Ross explains how the experience positively impacted her life. 

Name: Rae Ross
Class: December 2025 
Major: Forensic Psychology
Cohort Program: Honors Program 

What was your poem about and why is this subject important to you?
My poem was about my mother’s experience struggling with a chronic autoimmune disease known as Scleroderma. It explored what it was like watching her go from healthy to sick. I wanted to show that the disease wasn’t just physically affecting her, but there was also a mental impact on her. Even her perspective on society changed as her fight with Scleroderma progressed. 

What was it like working with an Emmy award-winning composer? 
He was amazingly talented in capturing everything I felt into a musical composition. He heard my words and made them music. When I first started writing this poem, I felt stuck. It was hard writing about my mother—especially since she passed from the same illness I was researching. Joseph took my pain and my feeling of being stuck, and he related it to himself and his own experience of having a sick parent. It went from making poetry and music to telling a story that lots of people have experienced and needed to hear. 

What was it like hearing your original music for the first time?
Hearing the music for the first time put me in a state of awe. I remember thinking, this is me. But more than me, it was my mom, her fight, her struggle, and her voice. My mom was a singer, and we spoke a lot about music theory and tone. When I heard my original music for the first time, all of those conversations and lessons came back to me and I was flooded with emotion. She would have felt loved, adored, and heard. I am tremendously grateful to Joseph for capturing that.