The journey began when my second sister Karina, started her piano classes. I used to watch her play, and then I would try out what she was doing. The first time I sat at the piano, I recall feeling a thrilling sensation and having the urge to explore a new world, and to discover a cosmos the existence of which did not seem to me possible at the time. The novelty of playing a key and receiving back a tone gave me the impetus to experiment with sounds. But…I had to go to lessons first.

I didn’t in those eary days yet know which note was which; but, determined, I started to scribble my first composition. Although laughable by any standard, when I look at this “première opus” nowadays – I still possess the score – it shows that there was some kind of spatial and aural imagination already present in the reserved eleven year old boy. As my skills developed as a young pianist so did my compositions. With hindsight I can clearly remember which composer I was studying at the time from the influences found in these my first scribblings.

It was when I commenced my music degrees at the University of Malta that I felt that composition had to be my life’s enterprise. During my second year of studies Professor Camilleri asked some of his students to attend a Summer Festival in Aberystwyth, Wales. Noli, a composition for clarinet and piano, was premièred there, and was performed once more during the first season of the Windows on Music concert series.

The first breakthrough in my career occurred when I became a member of Inizjamed, an NGO made up of Maltese artists who promote Mediterranean culture. Two events in March 2003 were organised at St James Cavalier where I was asked to compose a work Solitudni fil-Belt in collaboration with six poets.

This year was my best ever. I auditioned at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, London for a postgraduate degree in Music composition and was accepted and awarded a scholarship there and then.

Last January Tony Cassar Darien, the Artistic Director of the Manoel Theatre asked me to form an ensemble of young talented Maltese musicians to go on tour with Maltese contemporary music in Germany. The group, the Manoel Theatre Ensemble performed works by Charles Camilleri, Albert Pace, Mario Frendo as well as some of my own compositions at the Konzerthaus in Berlin, the Leipzig Gewandhaus and the Kurhaus in Wiesbaden as part of the Europamusicale festival.

On the 16th of July I was invited for the 5ème Festival International Universitaire de Musique in Sousse, Tunisia. There three works of mine were performed by Godfrey Mifsud on the clarinet, Sarah Spiteri on the viola and Veronique Zammit on the piano.

Next year promises to be as adventurous as this one not only because I shall be studying at Guildhall but, also because I have a performance in Finland, a concert at the Manoel Theatre and an ambitious project to compose a new work for the XII edition of the Youth Biennale which is going to take place in April 2005, in Naples.

I’ve always liked experimenting with sounds and studying at Guildhall will give me a chance to improve on what I have already learnt.