After a period working as a pianist and percussionist – when he collaborated with such composers as Karlheinz Stockhausen, John Cage, Earle Brown and Morton Feldman and played in the live electronic improvising group Gentle Fire (1968 - 1975) - he founded the new music ensemble Music Projects/London (1978) [1].
World premieres he has conducted have included Gavin Bryars' opera "Medea" (1984 Lyon and Paris Operas), of which he is also the dedicatee, Nicholas Maw's Odyssey (1989 Royal Festival Hall), James Dillon’s Oceanos (1996 BBC Proms)[2] John Casken's Golem (1989 Almeida Opera) as well as newly commissioned ballets for The Royal Ballet at Covent Garden, where he has been a guest conductor since 1988.
[5] He conducted the BBC television production of Mark Anthony Turnage's Greek, which won the Royal Philharmonic Society Award in 1992.
The work he developed there is gallery and site specific rather than based on conventional concert hall situations.
It has included performing Feldman's Rothko Chapel and Tallis' Lamentations in Tate's Rothko Room, commissioning Rebecca Saunders' Chroma (2003) for the large Turbine Hall, performing music during such exhibitions as Arte povera, Brâncuși, Open Systems and Kandinsky,[6] mounting a large scale John Cage Musicircus to celebrate the re-hang of the Abstract collection (2006)[7] and collaborations with BBC Radio 3.