[3] After being trained as a singer by Martindale Sidwell and encountering chamber and classical music through his father, Sebastian studied at the Royal Academy of Music and then to Cambridge University, where he sang with the King's College chapel choir.
[1] The University of Surrey had completed its move from the original campus in Battersea in 1970, so the music department was very new.
He has been with the university since then, being made a professor in 1981 and then the Head of the Music Department for the next ten years.
[1] His principal compositions include the Piano Quintet (winner of the Clements Memorial Prize in 1963), five string quartets (from 1969 to 2000), Death's Dominion (1971), Symphony in Two Movements (1972), Sonata for 21 (1975), Voices of Autumn (1975), Sonata for 8 (1978), Violin Fantasy No 2 (1979), Evening Canticles (1980-2008), Sonata for 17 (1987), Bristol Mass (1990), Hymn to St Etheldreda (1995), Sonata-Rondo for piano (1996), Rawsthorne Reflections for organ (1998), Sonata for 15 (2001), Interplay 2 for four pianists (2002), Duo for clarinet and piano (2003), and Hurrah!
[4] In 1977, he composed Quam Dilecta for a commission by St Matthew's Church, Northampton.