Much gratitude is due to Cambridge Music Festival for a beautiful commemoration of John Tavener, exactly ten years after his death. I can remember exactly what I was doing when I heard that news: writing music, a Tavener-influenced Marian Antiphon (Ave Regina Caelorum) which was included in this concert, performed by a very full strength 24-voice BBC Singers under Daniel Hyde. The evening also included music by Lennox Berkeley, his RAM teacher; John Rutter, his contemporary and friend at Highgate School, and Messiaen, an inspiration and model. I felt it a great honour to be included in this l ..read more

Not for the first time, my Sunday pilgrimage to Hampton Court's Chapel Royal was a challenge, with no trains running to the local station, and Kingston Bus Station closed for a lengthy rebuild. The town has in effect a motorway system running through its centre; as a pedestrian or cyclist, you have to be dead keen to reach your destination. Which I was; to attend a special Evensong in chapel at which a new setting of the Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis by Gabriel Jackson would be heard for the first time. The building was filled by an attentive congregation who listened with respect and apprecia ..read more

As frequently mentioned in these posts, it's a particular composer pleasure to hear your recent pieces in second performances by new artists. But a supercharged version of this experience would be: hearing a composition whose premiere you can only recall in a faint, uncertain way, now clearly articulated by a large super-confident chorus amidst a great wall of sound. This was the case when I travelled to hear Bristol Choral Society, under Hilary Campbell's direction, recording Praise Him with Trumpets, for a Delphian release. It's a short biblical anthem with athletic trumpet parts. A thrill ..read more

A lively crowd gathered in the library at Conway Hall to hear the first concert in 200 years of music by 'composer and radical' Eliza Flower. The provoker of this occasion was Frances Lynch, of Electric Voice Theatre and Minerva Scientifica; ably assisted by versatile tenor, Laurence Panter. Even BBC New Generation thinker Oskar Jensen (adding historical detail along the way) had been pressed into singing, and a fine job he did. You could imagine yourself in a politically engaged London living room in the mid 19th century. It was an immensely absorbing evening. Eliza Flower grew up in a radic ..read more

It was certainly an honour to be invited to address the London Branch of the Elgar Society. As a colleague had mentioned, 'you can be sure that whatever you talk to them about, they will know more about it than you' - which turned out to be true in the nicest, most polite way. The only possible Elgarian link I have is that I currently occupy the same office as the great man did: Master of the King's Music. So I decided to talk about the twentieth century holders of the post, centred around Sir Edward (who was MKM from 1924 until his death ten years later.) The research was fascinating, especi ..read more

This last week I visited the very civilised Gracefield Arts Centre in Dumfries (to see a most impressive 50-year retrospective by my artist cousin Alexander Robb.) The Scottish weather was in full working order - I'd had to break my journey overnight at Carlisle when the trains refused to play ball during a big storm - and the River Nith was pouring over the quayside in the town centre. Stepping past the foaming waters, I came to this tastefully inscribed boulder, which records that Dumfries was home to the exiled Norwegian forces during WW2. My own link to the town is that in 1979 it was the ..read more

Plymouth University kindly invited me to their Degree Ceremony. As always these days, my mind immediately filled with logistical enquiry about how long it would take to get there, and whether there would be any trains at all. But some time later, I found myself stepping out onto Plymouth Hoe, marvelling at the beautiful sea sights, with several important looking ships sailing back and forth from the vast Navy base one cove up the bay. The University had impressively set up its temporary graduation marquee right on the sea cliff, making for a most memorable day for us all. I felt particularly ..read more

During our days in Helsinki, it turned out that just about every major performance venue was closed for repairs. Crossing the water for a very quick visit to Tallinn, our musical luck changed considerably. That evening, our choice seemed to be between Mahler's Eighth and, next door, Wagner's Lohengrin. Given that Estonia's entire population is 1.3 million, that looks like pretty good classical music provision on a random evening right at the beginning of the season. At this late moment we were able to buy a pair of €64 tickets (the top price, best seats in the house) for what turned out to be ..read more

Visiting Helsinki, our kind host Margit Tuokko (soprano, a longtime interpreter of King Harald's Saga) conveyed us the forty miles north to Ainola, the home of the Jean Sibelius family for many decades, and now a museum. It's been kept as a cosy wooden house out in the countryside, and we learned that many of its pleasing design features had been the work of Aino, Mrs Sibelius. It was particularly delightful to learn that all the plants in the vigorous garden were the same species, in the same locations as those planted by Aino a hundred years ago. We toasted this friendly visit with fruit ju ..read more

My Proms commission Begin Afresh was inspired in a single moment about eighteen months ago, while walking the dog around a local housing scheme with well established tall trees at its perimeter. I suddenly focused on the sound of new (April/May) leaves swooshing in the breeze. Then I realised the sound wasn't a "swoosh", it was the "afresh, afresh, afresh" sound at the end of Philip Larkin's poem The Trees. One big pleasure of completing the resulting 17-minute large orchestra work is to have learned how many other people also find the Larkin poem particularly inspiring. It's interesting too ..read more