Born St Cecilia’s Day 1946, my career has ranged across the worlds of music, drama & journalism.

A chorister at Canterbury Cathedral, I later ran away to Paris at the age of 15 hoping to study with Olivier Messiæn but in fact began my professional life three years later as a silent film pianist at the National Film Theatre, London. At this time, despite being offered a place at Durham U, I prefered to study privately with, and under the guidance of, harpsichordist Jane Clark and her composer husband Stephen Dodgson. My tutors included conductor Nicholas Conran (Surrey U) and his teacher Sergiu Celibidache in Stockholm, organ with Allan Wicks (Canterbury Cathedral) and Alan Harverson (RCM).

As harpsichordist I have broadcast on BBCr3 with leading baroque music performers – Roy Goodman, Nancy Hadden, Jeremy Barlow and others – recorded Falla's Harpsichord Concerto for Capital Radio, performed in the UK premiere of Stockhausen's Die Jahreslauf and toured Europe and the US with several ensembles. For a time I was a BBCr3 Producer. Between BBCtv’s Greta Garbo - the Swedish Years (Emmy award 1968) and BBCr3's Mr V (Prix Italia nomination 1989) I composed music for more than 120 drama programmes on tv and radio, was musical director for the opening of both the Crucible Theatre Sheffield in 1970 and the prototype Bankside Globe Playhouse in 1971. Later, in 1981, while London Director of Music at the Royal Shakespeare Company, I conducted the world premiere of Nicholas Nickleby.

During the 70s I maintained a dual career, composing and recording drama music while also producing and directing film commercials. Whilst First Assistant Director to Christopher Miles in Greece on a C4/ERT drama-doc about the Elgin Marbles I acted in scenes with Hugh Grant and Oscar-winning scriptwriter Julian Fellowes.

Between 1983-89 I concentrated more on original writing, and scripted 25 Drama & Feature programmes for the BBC featuring many artists including David Suchet, Sam Wanamaker, John Wells, (Sir) Robert Stephens and Elizabeth Spriggs. The (Royal) National Theatre commissioned A Tormented God, a one-man show for Bob Stephens based on Berlioz’s Memoires. My 1991 stage play The Watcher in the Rain, about James Joyce’s schizophrenic daughter and Jung, was reviewed in The Guardian as ‘fascinating and unpredictable ... with a wealth of theatrical invention.’

From 1986, when Ian Dearden and I received an Arts Council commission to create The Glass Tower (an interactive electro-acoustic music drama for children), I was much involved with experimental music technology. As Head of 20thC Studies at the Royal College of Music Junior Department 1987-1991 I pioneered electro-music tuition for young people, creating a Yamaha-sponsored summer school at the University of East Anglia with Denis Smalley in 1989 called Soundscape. In 1990 I was commissioned by BBCr3 to create the experimental drama Notes from Janàcek's Diary, which I created single-handedly over 40 studio days in the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. The Times called it ‘a kaleidoscope of subtle and bewitching effects’. I subsequently presented the BBCr4 Kaleidoscope documentary MIDI Magic. The following year soprano Nancy Long premiered my Elegy for the SPNM (Society for the Promotion of New Music), a 30 minute electro-acoustic work that had been composed over the previous 2 years in the RCM studio.

1991 marked the end of a chapter in my life. I resigned from the RCM in order to evolve outwith the conceptual constraints of establishment musicianship, and for a time pursued my interests in green/holistic issues in journalism. I created a national listings magazine for John Brown Publishing called CataList and also edited a double issue of the academic journal Contemporary Music Review on Music & Mysticism with contributions from 17 leading musicians, philosophers and psychologists, as well as presenting a BBCr4 series Music As Sacred Experience. Also during this period I was commissioned to visit India for the BBC radio, which resulted in two programmes, a feature In Search of Sai Baba, and a documentary about the philosophy of Indian music. Subsequently, Denis Smalley, now Professor of Music at City University, London invited me to organise the first Music & the Psyche conference, which led to its establishment as a regular event, leading to the first appearance of the Music & Psyche Journal in 2001, and ultimately to the 2003 conference Music Is My First Love at Trinity College of Music.

After moving my family to the Wiltshire village of Tisbury in 1994 I began to reconnect with live music-making, returning to composition with works in a variety of mediums, including a graphic colour score which was selected for performance by the SPNM and published in Music & Mysticism. I also recorded Bach’s French Suites on the harpsichord, and began playing with a range of ensembles from Ghanaian drummers to Bath Baroque. Around this time I formed a duo with flautist and sound-healer Susan Nares which continues to this day.

The genius loci of Tisbury is William Beckford, an eccentric polymath who built the nearby gothick Fonthill Abbey and, later, Lansdown Tower in Bath. His only novel, Vathek, is considered one of the cornerstones of the 19thC romantic movement, influencing both Byron and Scott. Discovering his compositions in 1998 I set about editing and publishing the first complete edition of his music.

Drawing these wide-ranging interests into a coherent musical focus was my principal activity during 1998/9 and resulted in a variety of compositions, including another SPNM selection, The Cruelty of Dreams for violin solo, and Spectral Music for flute and piano, premiered at a concert in November 1999. For this occasion I formed a choir, the Beckford Singers, with to perform and record my Dylan Thomas songs for a cappella chorus. 2000 saw the completion of The Spy In The Mirror, a ‘dreamatic scenario’ for mezzo and ensemble. This is a significant work for me as I also give workshops in dream imagery and over recent years have been allowing my own compositional process to arise from dreaming rather than conscious intention.

In 2001, my younger dauter, Serafina, then a harp student at Trinity College of Music, was happily able to take part with Hugh Webb in the premiere of Meniscus – a work for harp duo commissioned to accompany an exhibition by the artist Chris Jennings at Kingston U’s  Picker Gallery. Later she gave the London premiere of my Grovely Wood. There followed Sonnets to Orpheus, a 55’ song-cycle to 12 of my own translations of Rilke Sonnets. It has been brilliantly recorded by Frances M Lynch in 2005.

My services as a piano teacher are in demand locally. With the former I encourage concert-giving in place of exams and have achieved remarkable results from ColourMuse colour notation for beginners.

Between 2002-07 I was Coordinator of the ESP (Ethics/Spirituality/Philosophy) field at the annual Big Green Gathering.

My writings on the broader philosophical questions surrounding music, technology and consciousness have been published in a number of journals including AudioMedia, Classical Music, NoiseGate, Diffusion, Analecta Husserliana, Music & Psyche (which I co-edit) and various Quaker journals. In 1997 a tape I produced in which members of the Salisbury Hearing Voices group explained their condition won a MIND award. This encounter led me to study the psychology of voice-hearing in relation to creativity and the resulting monograph, The Creative Voice, has been published in three journals and as a chapter in the symposium Raising Our Voices from Handsell Press.