CD: I wonder if we can talk about some of the remarkable people you have had as teachers in various settings. John Lambert was your first composition teacher beyond school. Why did you approach him?

JA: I went to John Lambert because both Olly Knussen and John Baird said I should. John Baird had been replaced by Olly Knussen when he left the Junior College to teach at Westminster School. They met once, because John had to show him the ropes of the new job, but independently from each other they both knew that John Lambert was a very good teacher. John Baird handed on about six or seven composers to John Lambert – one of the others was Richard Blackford. Since both arrows pointed towards Lambert, the choice was not accidental.

CD: Was this at the Royal College [of Music]?

JA: No, I studied with John Lambert for two years before College.

CD: Right, so what was your first meeting like?

JA: The first thing he looked at was my String Quartet No. 1 ‘Light Music’ – the title being in the sense of light diffused in a prism, not in the other sense of that expression! He looked at that score, which I sent him in advance. I went down to his house in Brighton and he pored over it in enormous detail. He checked up on ring modulation and all of that, and he asked me a lot of details about the technical procedures behind the piece. The first half of the session was him saying, ‘I see, and then what happens here technically?