Jenny McLeod was the sensation of New Zealand music. Born in 1941, at age five she discovered she could read music fluently. After a childhood in Timaru and Levin, she went on to study music with Douglas Lilburn and Frederick Page at Victoria University College, and in Europe with two imposing figures of mid-twentieth century modernism: Olivier Messiaen and Karlheinz Stockhausen. In 1967 she joined Victoria University's music department and was soon...