Read music at the University of Leeds where he studied composition under James Brown and Philip Wilby. He played piano and trumpet from the age of six, and his developing interest in composition was combined with a catholic taste and appetite for a broad diversity of different musical genres encompassing all strands of musical style. This now has a strong bearing on his stance as a composer who believes in pulling back together the fragmentation of different music types to paint a broad picture in contemporary music.

From 1984 - 89 he worked as a composer and arranger of music for film whilst simultaneously training his singing voice - three of these years (87 - 89) were spent in Bologna, Italy. He then completed the post-graduate Opera course (1990 – 93) at the Royal Academy of Music in London where he was awarded the Dip. R.A.M. and a post-student fellowship. He was awarded a bursary from the Amici di Verdi at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden to complete his singing studies for three months with Carlo Bergonzi in Busseto. Despite the beginnings of a successful singing career he made a commitment to return to composition on a permanent basis in 1996.

His song-cycle Point of Entry, based on the subject of war, was a collaboration with sculptor Bill Woodrow and poet Selima Hill, originally commissioned through English National Opera’s Contemporary Opera Studio and the Imperial War Museum as a cycle for baritone and piano, and featured on BBC Radios 3 and 4. In 1999 he was given a joint commission by the New Bristol Sinfonia to extend Point of Entry as a song-cycle for baritone and large orchestra, and to write a new work for solo violin and string orchestra entitled First Born – the two works were premiered in the Victoria Rooms, Bristol in 2000.

Sir Roger Norrington and the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra commissioned him in 2003 to compose a new work for symphony orchestra to mark the conductor’s 70th birthday. Conversation with Chet for symphony orchestra and trumpet was performed with Alison Balsom as soloist, in the Liederhalle, Stuttgart and the Konzerthaus, Vienna in March 2004, and was broadcast on radio worldwide.

He is currently developing a chamber opera entitled Beekeeper, which has been supported in its development by the Royal Opera House Covent Garden through OperaGenesis, and for which he won a largescale award from the Performing Right Society Foundation towards the music commission. The project will take the form of a multi-faceted opera, combining operatic forces with some elements of ballet and film, together with live chamber orchestra including mandolins, solo soprano saxophone, accordian, improvised piano and a more extensive sound world incorporating some cross-over into programmed use of sound effects and surround sound.

As a session conductor he has recorded with orchestras and musicians from the Halle, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, London Philharmonic, London Symphony Orchestra, Czech Philharmonic, Hungarian Festival Orchestra, Prague Symphony Orchestra, and Hungarian Opera Orchestra. His recording of The Big Picture won a BAFTA Wales award for best music score. His recent film output includes a score for Aardman Animations’ Creature Comforts.

He received an award from Arts Council England towards the commission for a new string quartet in five movements for the Smith Quartet, entitled Stato d’Animo, which was premiered at St. Georges Brandon Hill in Bristol, then in the Aula Absidale in Bologna, Italy as part of the Musica Insieme contemporary music series, MICA, in 2007.

Other plans include a new work for percussionist Evelyn Glennie, and a new choral work for the choir at Wells Cathedral.