Music history has flowed under the bridges for many years.

As I had collaborated with visual artists before whether on installations, on performance pieces, in the context of theatre works and as I had taught for a time in art colleges the idea of writing music in response to painting was not alien.

Writing tonal music now, you are not writing into the 19th Century.

There's another way of making music, by touching the lives and feelings of ordinary people.

I am writing something which I find satisfying and which I am prepared to put my name to as a composer.

Similarly you can make a transition from one set of instruments to another imperceptibly.

I remember once, when I started writing for the alto saxophone, a saxophonist told me to think of it as being like a cross between an oboe and a viola, but louder.