Ian maintains his long-held belief that no genre or style should be off the table when saying yes to composing work. His catalogue includes music for professionals, amateurs, young musicians, theatre, musical theatre and dance.

Ian uses a range of techniques to put together his musical ideas, techniques rooted in the incidental and intentional listening that identifies him as a person, not just as a composer. His current preoccupations – or niggling obsessions – include homophonic heterophony, non-octave repeating modes and derivative chord groups, rhythmic devices in melodic construction, temporal ambiguity and the application – and ultimate discarding – of sets of rules or systems.

Ian often describes how he has come to listen to music in terms of how simple it isn’t, having long imagined that he should be listening for and analysing its complexities. After all, what is there in a sound, other than timbre, volume, duration and pitch…?

Like many composers, Ian develops various systems to help him to generate the sketch material which eventually becomes the completed piece. The process of selecting, discarding and organizing what transpires is how music is made; this is what produce the version of the music to be heard – the only version that matters. While others may be interested in, even intrigued by the process, Ian does not believe that these are relevant to the experience of the listener. And yet, he often reflects on how his music might be perceived by others and on the relationship between composer and listener, a conundrum that becomes increasingly complex with each day of experience.

So what do all these moments of reflection achieve? The ultimate realisation is that the composer has little or no control over the way others perceive their music, whether they make the connections the composer believes are there to be made. What Ian’s music sounds like is Ian’s responsibility. What his listeners bring to their understanding of his music is not; what it means to each of them is personal, individual and, if they choose, forever private.