Musician Kelsey Lu covers the spring/summer issue of AnOther Magazine, styled by Nell Kalonji in Comme des Garçons, Dior, Jil Sander, Louis Vuitton, Noir Kei Ninomiya, Saint Laurent by Anthony Vaccarello and more. Craig McDean is behind the lens for the photo shoot, and Lynette Nylander sits down with Lu for the interview — which is masterfully narrated by the writer.

Here’s a taste of Nylander’s writing about Lu, and do leave AOC for a moment to read more.

Isolation is a theme that has followed Lu throughout her life – her proximity to it, her need to escape it and, at times, run towards it. She was born and raised in Charlotte, North Carolina, the daughter of a black father and a white mother, both musicians. “He grew up in the segregated part of town, she was rebellious. She grew weed in her room and told her parents it was a Japanese tomato plant!” They met at college when Lu’s mother, a pianist, would go and see her father play drums in his band Fungus Blues, and both became Jehovah’s Witnesses, “after someone knocked on his door”, says Lu. “He started studying [the movement], then my mom started studying to prove him wrong and then she realised it was the ‘truth’. They became Witnesses together. They had my sister Jessica, then they had me.” Her activity, outside her faith, was music. “It’s the only other thing that I knew.” Her parents listened to music, introducing their children to Nina Simone, Ella Fitzgerald, Fela Kuti, Tito Puente, Thelonius Monk, Stanley Clarke and Jimi Hendrix, and Lu learnt to play the piano, the violin and then the cello. “All of my friends were in the [Jehovah’s Witness] community, so that was my whole world. I didn’t know any kids from school, and music was the only thing my parents were hugely supportive of,” she says. “I was in all the youth orchestras, the community orchestras, all the competitions. It was my only time spent with other people. One day, my sister, mother and I went to see the Charlotte Symphony Orchestra [perform]. When we came out, we heard music and realised it was our high-school prom happening in another room [in the theatre]! We hadn’t even known it was happening. They were playing Britney Spears – we snuck in for two songs and then left.”