Where did choral music come in?

So I wrote a Christmas carol when I was at school.

I can't really remember why.

There was the bar choir carol competition and I very, very luckily won it.

I mean, it's just absolutely ridiculous in hindsight because like my first ever choral piece was done in the Royal Albert Hall.

I hasten to add, I've never had anything done in the Royal Albert Hall chorally ever again, but yeah.

And it's so amazing to look back on it.

Was it at Merton that you had a conversation with the chaplain that turned into your servant Elizabeth? Can you tell us a bit about that? I love how these kind of perhaps chance conversations can morph into an idea for a huge piece.

And did you have his playing in mind as you were writing it as well? And how much does knowing your performer shape the piece of music that you're writing

i had him very in mind for this piece and it's again it's so the sources of inspiration are uh semi-precious sort of stones schumann's carnival this 21-minute solo piano piece and some poetry by pablo neruda that's all quite random but So I heard him play Schumann's Carmen of All in preparation for this several times, two or three times maybe.

So I had his playing very much in mind.

I don't think it really, it doesn't, does it matter? It really helps having somebody in mind sometimes.

You don't want to write a piece that's so specific to one person that nobody else can play it, but I don't know how you do that anyway.

But it was really lovely having him in mind when I was, and certainly bits of the piece, all of the piece, uh, is directly inspired by watching him play in certain passages of the Schumann.

So, um,

So how do you go about translating something visual and physical, like a gemstone into sound and do specific stones map onto specific musical ideas or colors, for example?