Where did your choral journey begin?

I remember going to King’s College Cambridge to hear one of the Christmas services when I was eight, and seeing the youngest choristers walk past made me realise that they weren’t much older than me. I asked my parents if I could audition and they took me to meet David Hill at Winchester, and I really owe my entire music career to the fact that he accepted me on the spot. I started as a cathedral chorister that September, in 1991.

What were the highlights and lowlights of your experience?

There really weren’t any lowlights – it was immensely hard work, being away from home and boarding was tough at first, but being part of a professional choir at that age and the amazing things we got to do – concerts, recordings, and more – it was incredible to be part of something as a kid where ‘good enough’ wasn’t the standard, instead ‘world class’ was the goal.

Is there one piece that if you heard it again would transport you back to your choir days?

Stanford’s Beati Quorum Via brings back memories of walking to the cathedral with autumnal smell of leaves on the ground, and horse chestnuts underfoot. It’s an incredibly vivid connection for me.

Winchester College Chapel (image: Adobe Stock)

What is your all-time favourite piece of choral music?

Howells’ Collegium Regale – Nunc Dimittis

How has your exposure to choral music shaped your career?

It has defined it; both in terms of professionalism, to just the nuts and bolts of what musicality is; namely, communication. There’s so much of film and television music that draws from the emotion and sounds of the choral world, and to this day when I write underscore, or music to accompany drama, I realise that the core of it all is my choral upbringing. Particularly in the English choral tradition, we have music of such power and ambiguity; it speaks to something complex in the soul. Howells’s music in particular has so much angst and pain woven through the beauty, and that really is at the heart of good film music. It makes it so much easier to score difficult and deep moments when one has this musical vocabulary to draw from.

What is the biggest lesson you took away from this time of your life?

That high standards are about commitment, and that music is, at the end of the day, a team sport. We are nothing without those we play with and for whom we write. We guide the music, but they are the emotional conduit.