What is a sound artist?
Sound Art is a way of describing art made out of sounds, but the sounds are not restricted to those which we would normally term “music”. Often the work includes location recordings of particular places or sounds that are recorded and edited together. Sound Art is also often presented as “installations” which are similar to viewing art in a gallery, the sound becomes a place to be rather than a story.

What is the strangest project you've done?
For the Philharmonia Orchestra I did a project that included performances in a swimming pool with the audience hearing some of the music through underwater speakers. More recently I´ve been doing performances in caves and in a huge inflatable sculpture that you can go inside. I seem to have developed a reputation for doing unusual projects in strange places so these have included the swimming pool things as well as performances on the roof of the Festival Hall and on the Beach at Aldeburgh. One project involved music for dance company Salamanda Tandem in cathedrals with a Javanese gamelan orchestra, singers from a cathedral choir, a Japanese shakuhachi player and dancers in perspex boxes!

Why did you become a sound artist?
This seemed to be a way of encompassing all the things I wanted to do with Sound that are not normally termed “music”. I am interested in making experiences with and for people that draw attention to the act of listening and responding to sound. Sometimes this is best done in a concert hall at other times it can happen in the most unexpected places.

How did you get started in the music business?
I´ve always been involved with music as a player and as a composer, both in (sometimes terrible !) bands and playing the horn in orchestras and other ensembles. I did a music degree at Dartington and then worked with theatre companies and dancers as a workshop leader and composer.

What was your first big break?
I suppose it was being asked to create the music for an undersea (spot the recurring theme !!) fantasy in a pantomime when I was 16. I got some friends together with a heap of the strangest instruments we could find and recorded the music through an echo machine.

What pieces of technical equipment do you always travel with?
Apart from the flappy things on the side of my head (perhaps the most important equipment for any musician)! I have become seriously attached to my laptop as I can record music onto it, edit and then create CDs anywhere I go.

What is the most embarrassing thing that has happened to you in a concert?
I remember as a teenager messing up the 1st horn solo at the end of the New World Symphony in a fairly spectacular fashion in front of a huge audience. Having someone fall asleep (rather noisily !) in a concert of my pieces at college was also a little embarrassing.

What do you like best about working with young people?
I like the enthusiasm for trying new things, discovering ways in which we can all contribute to a musical process. Also I like to see people discovering whole areas of music which they didn´t know existed (this includes myself !).

What do you hope participants will get out of an education project?
A sense that the music we make can belong to us, an understanding of some of the ways in which we can collectively make music and a fun and interesting experience.

What is interesting about sound samples?
Creating music from small samples of sounds is a way of working with orchestral scale textures in small groups. It also encourages us to think about how we might create musical structures that encompass pre-made recorded materials and live interaction.

The Sinfonia machine www.rms.biz/docs/sinfonia.htm uses sound samples to replace musicians in West End shows like Les Miserables: do you think that in the future, symphony orchestras will also be replaced by digital simulations?
In short NO. Even though I have hundreds of CDs I still like to play my piano. I think that the enormous potential that technology has is most creatively used when it´s not there to replicate existing instruments but used to create different kinds of textures and manipulations of live sounds. It seems to me that using technology to replicate instruments is a bit of a dead end culturally a bit like having a picture of a bowl of strawberries rather than the real thing. We tend to (mistakenly!) think that a recording of a piece of music (or a sample of an instrument !) is the same thing as the actual instrument when it is a completely different thing all together. The picture of the bowl of strawberries might be very beautiful and we might want to hang it on the wall but it is a different thing to the physical strawberries. Technology has far greater potential than to replace instruments and probably works best in this area when it is in collaboration with musicians.

Which country to you enjoy working in the best?
I had a great time working on a big project in Singapore a couple of years ago.

What music do you like to listen to?
It's really varied depending on what I´m doing. Though if I´m going to sit down and listen, I´ve been working my way through the complete Mahler symphonies as well as a compilation of funeral music from all over the world, some Japanese Shakuhachi (bamboo flute) music and Black Angels, a terrifying amplified string quartet by George Crumb. I also really enjoyed the broadcast of Orbitals last gig from Glastonbury this year.

What instruments do you play?
I have played … Piano , Sitar, French Horn, accordion and used to play in a Balinese Gamelan orchestra. Nowadays I play the computer a fair bit as well as the french horn with electronic assistance!

What's your favourite film?
The Wicker Man

What's your favourite food?
Crispy duck and Sushi (but not together!)