ON HOLIDAY on Cruit Island, just off Donegal's coast, noted Belfast-born composer Neil Martin is working on a piece to be premiered during this year's Mela festival.
A collaboration with The Orchestral Qawwali, led by Sufi composers Rushil and Abi Sampa, it seems that the new work will be 'mystic' in mood when it debuts on August 22 at St Anne's Cathedral in Belfast.
"I'm using piano and getting together a nine cello ensemble, which is pretty rare," explains Martin (61).
"And yes, they'll be playing some reflective, slow music, with maybe a rhythmic section in the middle and a return to reflection at the end."
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Martin is himself a cellist, so that should be straightforward – but he'll also be scoring work for the Indian tabla and harmonium.
On how you create affecting music, Martin admits: "I like the dark side of things. In terms of harmony, my work may not necessarily be in a minor or major key, but between.
"I like working with the open-endedness of art"
Traditionally, a major key is 'sunny', a minor key 'sad', but Neil Martin's use of contemporary music manages to make a melancholy subject appealing.
It does get emotional at times, as he says, but that's part of the territory. A few years after the September 11 attacks, one of Martin's works was premiered at Ground Zero in New York. It came about by creative accident, as Martin reveals.
"I'd written an Agnus Dei that I thought should be expanded. It was part of a score for a BBC Northern Ireland TV programme about identity, six half-hour programmes, and I felt this little section would be good if self-contained."
He was contacted by Ruth McCartney, head of music at Methodist College Belfast, who wanted something special for her choir.
The process of moving from ideas to notes is intriguing. Every day, Neil Martin gets in the right mood by playing something on the piano or cello. He's a noted cellist and has played with the West Ocean String Quartet for a quarter of a century.
He says the process is a bit like meditation, "a way of escaping the madness in the world".
So what music did he start with this morning, I wonder?
"A traditional Irish song, John O'Dwyer of the Glen. I've known this air for half a century, and it's a beautifully crafted melody."
Often, though, it's Bach, Neil Martin's Baroque hero: "His work satisfies mathematically, harmonically, spiritually."
In fact, Martin says that his first ever memory was of hearing the joyful, rhythmic Kyrie Eléison from Bach's B Minor Mass being played at home, where his parents' vinyl collection triggered his musical interest.
"They played their records on a radiogram and had a great collection, maybe 50 or more records, from Ry Cooder to The Beatles, also Mozart 29 and Beethoven Five," he remembers.
"I think what Beethoven did with that five-note motif, three quavers and a crotchet, changed the world. To be honest, I think the way I move between musical genres is down to my parents' broad taste."
After attending St Malachy's where his music teacher was the late Father Kevin McMullan, Martin tuned in to Belfast's late-1970s soundtrack and joined a punk band, Wet Blanket. They did covers of The Clash and their own material at the Harp Bar, the Pound and other key three-chord venues.
"I remember writing something about a bum, an alcoholic guy I'd seen on the street, with a line 'And look at the alco / Nobody cares'. I did have a bit of a social conscience."
Other musical enthusiasms in pop include Thin Lizzy and Sting's "white reggae".
You can hear his emotional side in the score he produced for Hell's Pavement, a film by Andy Kemp about failings in social care. The subject matter was tough, and he has said he wanted music that, in its colours and harmony, was "empathetic, understated".
One of the characters is played by Pauline McLynn, always remembered as Mrs Doyle in Father Ted, whom he calls a friend.
Indeed, the pair have also collaborated: "She's so creative, ideas come pouring out of her in torrents. We worked on a 10-minute opera, a commission, about her father's life. And yes, of course it was comic."
Martin lives in north Belfast with his wife Siobhan and has four grown-up children, "all musical", as he says. His eldest daughter, Maebh (31), is a professional violinist who works for the great Nicola Benedetti.
Martin has written a violin concerto for his daughter, providing a kind of musical biography.
"It's called Dall'ombre, out of the shadows," he explains.
"I wanted the whole arc of her life, so it starts with her inside Siobhan's tummy. She performed it first at St Andrew's, where she studied languages and music, then did three concerts here in Northern Ireland in the spring."
But the guy isn't always musically serious, and recalls a moment when his fellow musicians in the West Ocean String Quartet asked him write something happy.
"So I did – I wrote a piece called The Happy Camper."
He whistles a bit, confirming it to be light, entertaining, funny.
When composing, Martin writes short motifs down in pencil on paper, sometimes adding words, but then moves to technology and the Sibelius program.
"It provides you with an orchestral sound, but the result can be flat if you don't work out the individual instruments and their unique sounds."
When writing a piece called Ossa, marking the 400th anniversary of the Flight of the Earls, Martin wrote words like 'anxiety' on the score, reflecting the idea of the men's fear and choosing uneasy orchestration to go with it.
He says a crucial part of his job, though, is thinking – letting the imagination dwell on the subject he's writing for.
Talking to Seamus Heaney, who was a friend, Martin asked him whether this mental 'time-out' was good. Heaney apparently observed it was vital in the creative process.
The composer reveals that he enjoys silence when travelling: "I recently lost my aunt, drove to her funeral in Cork which was over 400 miles, and didn't listen to anything in the car."
He says the time was creative and useful.
The Martins have been renting the same place on Cruit Island for 30 years and Neil likes the peace there, saying he enjoys cloud-gazing.
"The name 'Cruit' is the Irish for hump, as it resembles a hump, and harp, with a similar shape. I like looking at the mainland, the sky and sense of being on the edge."
A BBC Northern Ireland documentary is going to be made on Neil Martin's life, to be aired next year.
"It hasn't a title yet, but it's the 'obit' documentary, you know, to be shown when I 'go' – I hope, slumped at the piano."
We touch on death and the end of things and I ask whether Martin has considered what music he'd like at his funeral in the distant future. He tells me about witnessing an exuberant send-off in New Orleans, where the departed had a Dixie jazz band.
"The hearse was drawn by horses, the musicians led it along the street and we followed for a bit. That might do me."
Neil Martin and musicians from The Orchestral Qawwali Project perform at St Anne's Cathedral on August 22 as part of this year's Mela. See belfastmela.org.uk for more information.
