When Jenny was 4, she began learning Suzuki method violin with the late Rosanne Forde, who had just moved to the area.<\/p>\n
Rosanne had a strong belief that no child was more or less musically talented than any other child, but having sat in on a few of the lessons – there were definitely some who picked things up faster than others.<\/p>\n
At 14, Jenny was chosen for the National Youth Orchestra, and a few years later, the National Youth Choir, which took her to countries including Russia, Slovenia and Hungary.<\/p>\n
In 2000, her final year at school, Jenny was also one of the first recipients of the ODT\u2019s Class Act Award for excellence.<\/p>\n
The Alexandra-born violinist died aged 42 after a battle with frontotemporal dementia. Photo \/ Melissa Banks Photography<\/p>\n
After leaving school, Jenny studied and gained an honours degree in performance music at Otago University, completing her final year at Canada\u2019s University of Toronto.<\/p>\n
At 22, she was awarded a US$10,000 ($17,000) scholarship to complete her master\u2019s degree from New England Conservatory in Boston, US, with acclaimed teacher Miriam Fried.<\/p>\n
The opportunity to study in Boston was like a dream come true for Jenny, she said at the time.<\/p>\n
\u201cI never thought I\u2019d end up with the opportunity to go to a place like Boston\u2019s NEC,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s one of the best music schools in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Alexandra community rallied to help her raise another US$29,000, which included a NZ$20,000 grant from the Central Lakes Trust.<\/p>\n
Dad said at the time it felt like the Alexandra community had come together to help get her there.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt really felt like she had the whole town behind her,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
After completing her master\u2019s, Jenny got her first professional position with the Tasman String Quartet at the end of 2008, at the University of Colorado.<\/p>\n
Jennifer Banks began learning violin at age 4 and went on to perform with orchestras around the world. Photo \/ Melissa Banks Photography<\/p>\n
In 2013, Jenny began playing with the Gewandhaus Orchestra in Leipzig, Germany, and in 2014, she gained a much-coveted tenured position.<\/p>\n
At the time, she said: \u201cThere\u2019s a real sense of pride in this orchestra, about its history and where it\u2019s come from.\u201d<\/p>\n
It is there she met Lukas Olszewski, and in April, 2015 baby Ella came along.<\/p>\n
But when Ella was about 4, Jenny started behaving erratically, and her friends noticed a big change in her behaviour.<\/p>\n
When Covid lockdown came to Germany in early 2020, Jenny didn\u2019t understand. <\/p>\n
\u201cThis intelligent, interested woman who was normally informed about everything that happened in Europe, suddenly had no idea,\u201d one friend in Germany said.<\/p>\n
Her friends took her to numerous doctors before she was eventually diagnosed with behavioural variant frontotemporal dementia (bv-FTD). The life expectancy is two to 10 years.<\/p>\n
The diagnosis was a devastating shock for everyone.<\/p>\n
Jenny was brought home from Germany during the height of strict Covid regulations after she stopped using her phone, and communication with her became impossible.<\/p>\n
Shortly after she arrived home, she badly broke her leg.<\/p>\n
This was the beginning of a whole year in Ward 6C of Dunedin Hospital, before an appropriate place was found in Cameron Cottage – a newly established care facility in Dunedin for younger people.<\/p>\n
She remained there until this year, when the level of care she required meant she was moved to Ranui Home in Alexandra. <\/p>\n
Towards the end of June, Jenny developed pneumonia; she died peacefully, surrounded by her family, on June 30.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When Jenny was 4, she began learning Suzuki method violin with the late Rosanne Forde, who had just…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":528330,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[54328,74,18919,33215,33523,1396,5837,634,799,6179,71,798,39194,10938,39164,3025,65041,117,111,43,139,69,10745,26584,15120,151293,44549,27886,24503,544,5824,1961,6382,20838,260946,215783,17454,102,17450,13632,80],"class_list":["post-528329","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-54328","tag-after","tag-aged","tag-alexandra","tag-ashley","tag-banks","tag-battle","tag-death","tag-dementia","tag-died","tag-from","tag-frontotemporal","tag-gifted","tag-herald","tag-jenny","tag-most","tag-musician","tag-new","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-orchestras","tag-permission","tag-remembered","tag-republished","tag-respected","tag-sister","tag-smyth","tag-some","tag-talent","tag-this","tag-took","tag-tribute","tag-verbatim","tag-violinist","tag-whose","tag-with","tag-worlds","tag-written","tag-zealand"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/528329","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=528329"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/528329\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/528330"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=528329"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=528329"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=528329"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}