As soon as I could get my hands on it I was making up tunes – improvisation was my way into composition. Someone heard me play and said I should try out for some of the specialist There was a notice in the corridor at the Royal Academy about the Jean-Frederic Perrenoud Prize for under-15s in Vienna. I sent in a little piece for violin and piano called and it won! I thought I could be taken seriously for the first time. Composers like Panufnik, Bartók or Stravinsky spoke to me more directly than Xenakis, Boulez or Carter – whose music I was given to study. I could admire it, but it just didn’t feel right, and if I couldn’t do that as well, or better, then why even pursue it? I look forward and think, ‘I hope I can reach the level that I reached with that piece and then try and build on it again’. . I’m writing a new piece for the Hallé Youth Orchestra; I’ve only just started, so I’m looking at literature and trying to make it relevant to all the upheaval and uncertainty we’re going through. Strings and choral are very comfortable areas, but I like shifting gears. It’s a different mindset writing choral or vocal music to completely abstract or non-narrative music. Working with orchestras is luxurious; you’ve got so many colours, so much you could do, and then there’s the restraint you have to show in not using everything!
