When I was about eight I was delighted by how moody and impolite the music of Beethoven could be. So I spent my early teenage years learning to play the piano and writing “faux-Beethoven” piano sonatas, usually in “dramatic” keys like C minor. I remember well my profound hatred of pop music as a teenager, although since then I’ve become aware of certain “exceptions which prove the rule”. As I grew older it was necessary to confront the fundamental question of “why write faux-Beethoven?”. This was the result of an increasing interest in the achievements of more recent composers: the cause of much agonizing over how - as a composer - to deal with the existence of so many tempting ideas and philosophies about music.

In 1992 I went to University of York for a bachelor’s degree in music, having been attracted by the breadth and possibilities for eclecticism offered by their course. Whilst there I worked with Roger Marsh, whose energy is infectious, and I liked it so much that I stayed on for a master’s degree in composition. During that period a handful of overwhelming musical experiences really opened my eyes to what is possible: at the Huddersfield Festival hearing Ligeti’s Violin Concerto and Macabre Collage in 1994, and Nono’s Caminantes… Ayacucho in 1995, and at Roger’s suggestion performing the piano part of Berio’s Points on the curve to find… with the University New Music Group (now called Chimera) in 1995, which was truly exhilarating.

I started my doctorate in composition at Harvard University in 1997, and was struck by the way in which everyone questioned everything all the time. Having relied heavily on an intuitive approach to composition, my colleagues at Harvard caused me to search for ways of getting over the problem with intuition: its “hit-and-miss” nature. The culture of questioning everything encouraged me to strive for greater rigour in my working methods, and to analyse and try to understand better the nature and potential of ideas. Whilst there Mario Davidovsky was very important in encouraging me to follow through convictions, think in new ways and also to believe in the value of art, and Joshua Fineberg, having worked at IRCAM for 10 years, helped me towards a more detailed awareness of the nature of sound and the consequences of language. But more importantly than any of this, I met my wife, Jennifer Loconto, during my first months at Harvard.

In Sep 2004 I started a three year contract as a lecturer in composition at the University of Manchester, and in Sep 2007 my position at Manchester became permanent. I find teaching composition very stimulating because of the opportunity to interact with other composers’ creativity. Since starting at Manchester I have set up the university’s New Music Ensemble, which has a number of objectives: to give students the chance to play uncompromising modern music, to give them a stage to have their own music performed, and to keep us all aware of the breadth of music that is being written these days. The ensemble is constantly expanding, and we’ve already played some very ambitious music including Stockhausen’s Kreuzspiel, Birtwistle’s Silbury Air and Grisey’s Partiels.

My love of playing the piano and a fascination with how music works have always informed my work as a composer. Indeed my relationship with the music of the past – particularly that of Bach, Beethoven and Schubert – is just as important as that of more recent composers (Ligeti, Nancarrow, Nono, Birtwistle…) to the way I think about music. In composition this has implications for how I consider harmony and form: tensions between material are crucial to the way my music evolves. Any musical process will develop its own momentum, but I do value the freedom at any moment to respond to an imaginative impulse and do something surprising. Managing this relationship between intuition and calculation seems to me to be at the heart of composing music that is worth writing.

Compositional priorities do shift between pieces, but I often find myself navigating a pathway between seemingly contradictory desires to write music that is intimate, where every nuance counts (as exemplified by Nono) and music that is playful or quirky in some way (as exemplified by Nancarrow). I have become increasingly interested in processes of variation and transformation, and in the effect of disrupting such processes. I have also been preoccupied with exploring in some detail various approaches to harmony: several compositions use a harmonic language based on 9th chords (which allow for infinite tiny adjustments that inflect harmonic colour significantly), and my most recent work, Interlocking Melodies for string quartet exploits relationships between the four complementary whole-tone scales a quarter-tone apart.