1. How and when did you get interested in composing?
When I was about fifteen I started to experiment with harmonies at the piano. I tried to notate my short piano pieces that were highly personal in nature and composed mainly for my own pleasure.
2. Is composing your 'day job' or do you do something else as well?
Nowadays more so, however I have been involved for many years with the development of music in Drogheda [town north of Dublin].
3. Where do you mostly get your ideas?
The landscape where I live. I am influenced by archaeology and history. I love walking on the beaches in County Louth and I often get my musical ideas or flashes of inspiration in such locations.
4. What are you working on at the moment?
I am composing a new work for solo guitar and I have been asked to compose a piece for cello and guitar for inclusion on a new CD coming out later this year. I'm also grappling with a piece for school orchestra which has given me quite a bit of trouble compositionally and form-wise down the years!
5. Describe your typical working day.
When I compose, I don't keep regular hours; I just keep at it with a great intensity until the work is finished. It's a bit like Alice in Wonderland: ‘Begin at the beginning...and stop when you've reached the end.’
6. What is it like hearing a new piece played for the first time?
I get a sense of great excitement combined with an acute attack of nerves. I don't know which is worse!
7. What has been the highlight of your career so far?
A few highlights would include collaborations with Seamus Heaney for an RTÉ/BBC TV programme, A Snail in my Prime with poet Paul Durcan, and the premiere of The Lost Land in a fabulous auditorium in Toronto.
8. What has been the lowlight of your career so far?
Having my master tapes stolen on the bus from Drogheda to Dublin!
9. What is your greatest ambition?
To compose a really good orchestral piece.
10. Which musician in history do you most admire and why?
Debussy: I admire his whole aesthetic, his fearlessness and his will to experiment.
11. Which present-day musician do you most admire and why?
I have a great admiration for the French composer Henri Dutilleux. Like Lutoslawski, Dutilleux has created his own language in a slow and fastidious manner. I have always had a soft spot for Joni Mitchell. I love both her early and late albums: what individual melodies and harmonies!
12. Which period of history would you most like to have lived in and why?
Paris between 1890 and 1920, where I would have heard premieres of Debussy and Ravel. Imagine attending Diaghilev's Ballet Russes and participating in the riotous behavior at the premiere of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring.
13. What is the best thing about being a composer?
The sheer joy in the act of composing. When a piece comes right all's right with the world!
14. What is the worst thing about being a composer?
Attending a rehearsal of a new piece and hearing back a glaring musical mistake or suddenly realising one has made notational errors in the parts!
15. If you weren't a composer, what other career might you have chosen?
Some branch of medicine. On the other hand, if someone gave me a license to investigate a major archaeological site: now that would be something else!
16. What is your concept of heaven?
To have my own symphony orchestra totally at my disposal like Haydn.
17. What is your concept of hell?
To lose the rest of my master tapes or CDs again!
18. What is your favourite food?
Italian or French dishes with lots of garlic, olives, red wine and good company.
19. If someone gave you three months off with unlimited travel and living expenses, what would you do?
Go on a journey through Greece.
20. If you could have one thing in the world that would really help you as a composer, what would it be?
A super computer that would become my amanuensis: I could talk to it, call out the melody, harmony and orchestration and it would write it out for me; no more sore eyes or joints!
