1. How and when did you get interested in composing?

When I was very young. I loved making up sounds and was always fascinated by the visual shapes and patterns of notation. We didn’t have much access to recordings. In Rostrevor you couldn’t even tune into BBC Radio Three and I was twelve before a ‘record player’ appeared in the house. So I had to make my own music.

2. Is composing your 'day job' or do you do something else as well?

I am Head of Humanities in Dundalk Institute of Technology. That includes music, music technology, cultural studies, multimedia, film, theatre studies and Borderlands studies. A broad church for a composer but I like the mix of disciplines and the energies they create.

3. Where do you mostly get your ideas?

It varies depending on the type of work I write. If voices are involved obviously text is vital but other times it might just be a particular sonority or note pattern, even a method of attack or dynamic shapes throw up many ideas.

4. What are you working on at the moment?

My annual Christmas Carol.

5. Describe your typical working day.

As I work in education management I have a lot of meeting to attend and administration to take care of but I keep weekends, vacation breaks and very often very early mornings and late nights for composing.

6. What is it like hearing a new piece played for the first time?

It can be nerve-wracking and often difficult to distance your mind to listen analytically and I hate being there for a first performance. I’m the sort of person who prefers to fade into the background.

7. What has been the highlight of your career so far?

That’s a multiple -- it’s actually each public performance of your work (that you know about).

8. What has been the lowlight of your career so far?

Quite a few. I remember the first time I had a work broadcast on radio. It was on at 10.30pm and my trendy brother who still thinks he’s trendy was having a wild teenage party. He stopped the party in the middle to turn on my piece and I’m afraid I killed the party stone dead. Very uncool!

9. What is your greatest ambition?

Sapientiae [the state of wisdom]. I hope as I get older it becomes more attainable, that and Hildegard’s Divine Love.

10. Which musician in history do you most admire and why?

I admire all the unsung women musicians and composers -- they probably did most of the work for the men. As for single composers: Hildegard, Monteverdi, and then I jump into the twentieth century.

11. Which present-day musician do you most admire and why?

Difficult because I admire many. My composition teachers Charles Wuorinen and Raymond Warren, and for the sheer quality of musicianship, I have never met anyone to equal my sister Siobhán. She has written a lot for children and young people and has created great beauty from the utmost simplicity.

12. Which period of history would you most like to have lived in and why?

Early seventeenth century when so much of the older cosmological world view was being replaced by empirical science. I see myself in Venice in the early 1600s dressed in purple and red, the mistress of a cardinal and ruling Venice from the bedroom. Otherwise I would be an underground Polish composer of the 1960s.

13. What is the best thing about being a composer?

The ‘compositional’ high when a work is really going well and all the excitement is bubbling away -- I end up laughing quite often through it. Passion about your writing is what you have to feel and also the smell of black India ink and a scratchy italic pen.

14. What is the worst thing about being a composer?

Suffering writer’s cramp and often the lack of time and space. Thinking time for a bigger work can often be a luxury. Editing and checking can be a real bore because you have to ensure that everything you’re been living with in your head has to be checked and rechecked to make sure about the performers’ interpretation.

15. If you weren't a composer, what other career might you have chosen?

I originally intended doing law and I have a passion for politics but I think now an astronaut, even though I have no head for heights!

16. What is your concept of heaven?

Not having to answer probing questions like these!

17. What is your concept of hell?

Answering these questions. I prefer to be very quiet.

18. What is your favourite food?

I like simple things like raw oysters, peaches, goat’s cheese and strawberries.

19. If someone gave you three months off with unlimited travel and living expenses, what would you do?

The Harmony of the Spheres -- go to outer space of course!

20. If you could have one thing in the world that would really help you as a composer, what would it be?

A very rich patron!