It’s rare in my experience to have complete carte blanche over a concert and broadcast involving thirty performers. So I have to thank the BBC for letting me choose the hall (stylish Milton Court) the programme (major works by Tüür and Messiaen to precede a new work by me) and the performers (who else but the incomparable BBC Singers under Sofi Jeannin, with the Ligeti Quartet.) If I could have named the date and simultaneousl...

Lewisham Borough, in southeast London, teamed up with local conservatoire Trinity Laban this autumn to produce a festival featuring older adult performers. Someone had been very busy thinking up appropriate titles for these events  - Age Against the Machine,  Inspired Not Tired - but I most liked the subtitle Creative Ageing. Particularly as I now fit snugly into the target demographic, and this wording offered an aspirational...

My regular weekend conveyance, the Rail Replacement Bus, transported me slowly across southern England to Salisbury – but worth it of course, to arrive in the exquisite Cathedral Close and walk past its amazing parade of luxury ecclesiatical mansions.

My visit was to the annual Celebration Day of the Royal School of Church Music. It was high time I went, as I’ve often thought I should know more about this body which is ‘an educ...

I should know by now not to predict these things, but my new Oboe Concerto received an expectably assured performance from its dedicatee Celia Craig in Cardiff last week. You can never predict an orchestra however, and it was a pleasant surprise to work with BBC NOW for the first time. The players, led by Lesley Hatfield, were solicitious and imaginative in creating the orchestral surroundings for Celia – who had herself taken...

I have been in Vienna, on the jury of a competition, the outcome of which will be one of many festivities surrounding the rebuilding of the Riesenorgel ("Giant Organ") in St Stephen’s Cathedral. As a second round of the contest is coming up in a few months’ time, I won’t say any more about it for now. But my visit allowed me to become thoroughly fascinated by this impressive organ-restoring feat.

The Cathedral’s once much-loved...

High on my list of “How do they manage that?” is St Paul’s Sinfonia, who operate out of beautiful St Alfege Church, Greenwich. This extremely able chamber orchestra mounts a 10-concert series through the year which includes classics, concertos with leading young soloists (fantastic violinist Joo Yeon Sir during my visit) commissions (a new oboe concerto by Robert Saxton is coming up in May) and knotty revivals (my own Heroic S...

On a beautiful evening in South Kensington, it can be imagined how happy I was to hear my piece Forest played in the Proms by the BBC Symphony Orchestra. They also seemed happy with their chief conductor Sakari Oramo, and sitting back listening to them in the Albert Hall was a lovely experience.

Part of my relaxed aura arose from the fact this was quite an old piece (written for the CBSO and premiered in 1995 under Simon Rattle...

I love the Wigmore Hall, and for starters, who else would invite me onto a panel for a discussion titled “Schläft ein Lied in alle Dingen”? Wondering if we would also have to discuss in German, I was glad to meet fellow panellists Iain Burnside and Tom Service in the Bechstein Room, the Wigmore’s rather bunker-like bar, and establish that English would be spoken (properly, by an all-Scottish panel.)

Filling in a short gap in th...

Could there be any more inviting sight than the gangway at Wemyss Bay station, leading down to the Rothesay ferry? I was crossing the short stretch of sea to the Isle of Bute to spend a day at Rothesay Academy, and, by a well-known meterological rule, just as the school term was beginning and everyone was obliged to stay indoors, the weather had become absolutely gorgeous.

This school however is not a bad place in which to be i...

Kudos to Proms supremo David Pickard for inventing the ‘Proms at…’ series, thanks to which we concertgoers travel to interesting London spots for daytime events, and can give Cadogan Hall a miss. This BBC Singers’ concert on Saturday afternoon brought a full house to St Sepulchre’s, just up from Old Bailey, in a building known as the Musicians’ Church, especially for its memorial to Sir Henry Wood, who first picked up music he...