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

When I was a kid I learned to play piano, trumpet and played in rock bands. I had some of the standard background that some composers have: played in the National Youth Orchestra of Ireland, had theory lessons etc., but I also think the non-standard musical training I had was equally important.

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

At the moment composing is my day job. Though I have also taught at university.

3. Where do you mostly get your ideas?

From everywhere. It could be hearing the clank of cutlery on plates during a pained silence at dinner, or pneumatic drills in the distance when I wake up mixed with my neighbour's daughter practising tuba. It can also be from film -- I recently saw Elephant and the sound design was stunningly beautiful -- or books, or paintings.

4. What are you working on at the moment?

A piece for the National Sculpture Factory in Cork. It's for four performers. Each will be located in a separate space, locked away from the others. All performers will be miked and amplified within the main space, so the audience will hear all these different acoustics of space.

5. Describe your typical working day.

There's a great Satie book where he describes his working day and it is something like 9.43am: rise; 9.52-10.07: be inspired... but I can't remember it all. My day is split into doing purely creative work, and then doing practical things. So part composing, and then part notating, sending emails, organising concerts, rehearsals etc.

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

Often quite terrifying! The first time the composer hears their piece is usually in rehearsals, and things need to be fixed. It gets better and better the more you hear and rehearse it.

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

Probably the opera I wrote for Barbie dolls: XXX_LIVE_NUDE_GIRLS!!! We have performed it in Dresden, Vienna, Oxford, Stuttgart, and have more gigs lined up. It was the biggest project I've attempted so far, and there were so many details to cover -- from finding a tiny doll-sized telephone for Barbie to finding a way to paint soybeans with glow-in-the-dark paint, on top of writing the music.

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

That the song The Man in The Moon I wrote and submitted to A Song for Ireland in 1982 was not selected to represent Ireland in the Eurovision song contest.

9. What is your greatest ambition?

I defer to John Cage on this, what he writes in Silence about "waking up to the very life we're living"...

“And what is the purpose of writing music? One is, of course, not dealing with purposes but dealing with sounds. Or the answer must take the form of paradox: a purposeful purposelessness or a purposeless play. This play, however, is an affirmation of life -- not an attempt to bring order out of chaos nor to suggest improvements in creation, but simply a way of waking up to the very life we’re living, which is so excellent once one gets one’s mind and one’s desires out of its way and lets it act of its own accord.”

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

There are so many, for so many different reasons -- John Cage, Mahler, Stravinsky, Perotin, Satie, Berlioz, Bach, Zelenka, Esquivel, Kurt Schwitters.

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

Again, so many. PJ Harvey, Robert Ashley, Bjork, Pauline Oliveros, Sonic Youth, Phil Niblock. They're always trying new things, going their own way, there's integrity to their work, and they enjoy it immensely.

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

Now. Unless I can go back to a period of time in which I was fully inoculated against all the diseases which would have killed me by the time I am the age I am now, or lived somewhere where as a woman I could vote and be treated equally. Though I would very much like to have heard Perotin organum sung in Notre Dame in the middle ages, or seen Venice in the Renaissance. And I would love to have witnessed the Dadaists first hand, seen Hugo Ball reciting Karawane, or Jean Cocteau fighting Satie's lawyer in Paris in the 'teens.

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

The independence and having space to work out ideas. Building this other world and being able to realise that. The happiness that comes from a good day of work, the sheer joy and play in making something.

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

At times you can be quite isolated, so you need to structure your time well. And often trying to explain what you do to people on airplanes can be quite nightmarish...

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

Something in the arts, most likely. I love experimental film and design. When I was a kid I wanted to be a vet or a psychoanalyst.

16. What is your concept of heaven?

Balance between all aspects of life. Composing in the same room as a sleeping dog.

17. What is your concept of hell?

Being stuck in a job or situation which I hate and being too afraid to get out. Being stuck in a lift playing only Celine Dion.

18. What is your favourite food?

When I lived in Chicago, my composition teacher Amnon Wolman would have us over for Shabbat dinners on Friday nights, and his partner Eyal would cook the best meals I have ever eaten. This is probably my favourite food. Though I also love sushi and chocolate mousse.

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

Hike to Macchu Pichu in Peru, and fly over the Nazca lines.

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

A machine to capture sounds and turn them into birds and butterflies, so that I could release them all and stand as they flew around me.