Late Developer

Tuesday, the 25^th of November 2025 

#composing #mentor #Cambridge #PatHalling #quartet 

What should have been a rather dull seminar about commissioning turned into an inspiring session. In particular, Spitalfields Festival director Sarah said there were some really interesting voices only emerging late in life. 

The most common reasons are raising a family and financial constraints getting in the way of composing. For me it was the fear of not being taken seriously.  

I have always been a composer. My earliest memories are visiting my grandparents and rushing to their piano to play with all those sounds. At age 4, I rather precociously asked my parents for a piano and a television, but could I have the piano first. My wish came true at age 6 when my parents bought a piano which was affordable only because two of the notes (E and F below middle C) were broken. So I wrote music that avoided those two notes. Maybe that sparked my love of modes? 

For me, the writer’s block came when I went to Cambridge University. I was surrounded by great names in contemporary music and I thought I had to write like them to be taken seriously.  I did write some atonal music, including a 12-tone motet, Ave Maria, but even I hated it! I didn’t have the confidence to write what was in my head. So I didn’t write. For 30 years. That’s how long it took and I shall forever be grateful to Pat Halling for asking me to write a string Quartet. He believed in me without hearing a note of my music! Maybe he could see what sounds were in my head?  

It took two years to write that string quartet, In Conversation. Two years to make sense of everything that had been quietly festering in my head for the previous three decades. Yet it sounds fresh and it remains a favourite.