Composer John Maxwell Geddes tells Michael Tumelty about his project to nurture young musicians.

Througout his 45-year professional career, composer John Maxwell Geddes has worked with young people. He has been a secondary school teacher. He has been a further education lecturer. He has trained composers, at the RSAMD and elsewhere. He has trained a generation of Scotland's music teachers (including this writer).

As a respected conductor of youth orchestras, he has an unparalleled pedigree. As soon as he graduated, he became a member of staff with the Glasgow Schools Symphony Orchestra, and retained a relationship with them as conductor for more than 40 years. He was principal guest conductor with the Dumfries and Galloway youth orchestra for some 15 years. He has been conductor of the Aberdeen City Music School orchestra for the past five years.

And all the while, as a professional composer, he has turned out symphonies, concertos, orchestral music, chamber music by the yard, and uniquely distinctive instrumental character pieces. Now, at 67, he is among the country's most senior and respected composers, whose music, it has to be said, is championed more consistently abroad - especially in Germany - than at home.

"In his education work," said a former colleague, "John has been around the block - numerous times." Another musician remarked: "John has done the lot."

Well, not quite. Drawing together several strands of his multi-layered experience, Geddes devised a new project that aimed to train young musicians of ability, who may or may not have any experience in the creative field, to compose their own music.

That in itself is not a new idea. But Geddes's strategy went further. He would challenge small groups of youngsters to produce, individually, short pieces of music specifically created and designed to be played by a professional ensemble at the highest level in a public concert.

As the idea developed, Geddes broadened it, while keeping it tightly focused. He wanted the project, which he christened New Vistas, to be replicated in three geographical areas of Scotland, with different responses from the young composers of each area, and across what he called "the socio-economic" range.

The geographical areas were defined by the conductor-com-poser-teacher's own working experiences in Scotland. Thus, there would be a project in the Dumfries and Galloway region, another in the north-east of the country, and a third in the composer's heartland, Glasgow.

Geddes worked out the logistics of what would clearly be a challenging venture, costed it on the basis that he would have absolute editorial control, as it were, in financial terms, put it to the Scottish Arts Council, and received in response a Creative Scotland Award, worth £30,000, to bring the project out of the imagination, off the page and into actuality. Geddes was now in absolute charge of every aspect of the project.

To recruit young musicians he had meetings with principal teachers and music advisers in the regions. They put out the word, looking for volunteers, youngsters who were already playing. Where, as in the case of Glasgow, there was clearly going to be an oversubscription (between 30 and 40 applied), Geddes selected his group anonymously, based on evidence of their work.

Meanwhile, he began to put the money to use. He wanted to use top-flight professionals, so he approached the Paragon Ensemble and employed nine Paragon soloists, who would form three trios, one for each of the geographical areas. Their remit was to travel to each area, introduce the young aspiring composers to the instruments for which they would write music, explain what was practical, hold workshops with them, advise and mentor them, rehearse their finished efforts, then play them in a concert. Geddes paid all fees and incidentals, including travel.

He also hired all the venues, paid for all the project's administration and ancillary costs out of the award, and employed a sound engineer to record the finished concerts so that the young composers would have documented evidence of their achievement, which might be used towards a Higher Grade award, or whatever.

Geddes's final tally of young would-be composers across the three areas was 19. How on earth did he start? "I told them my own story; about how, as a kid, I couldn't read music, how I got into it and of the mystical world that opened up to me. They're all experienced readers already. I wasn't.

"I let them hear my early works, which I wouldn't want played now. I improvised for them. I talked about scales and modes and made them do wee exercises: using such and such a scale, I asked them to write me a wee tune."

Clearly, as Geddes outlined the detailed work that went on under the bonnet, the project was based on learning the actual craft of writing down music as much as the imaginative interpretation of an idea.

"It's totally about the craft. There's nothing airy-fairy about this. I'm not a dreamer about it. You can't learn an instrument without learning the craft. It's the same with composition: learn the rules and the craft first; then, when you know them, you can throw the rules out of the window."

Dealing with unleashing the imaginative processes was another matter. As a stimulus and a focus, Geddes gave each of the three groups a different generic image around which to base their little three-minute pieces.

"The kids in the Stewartry got Landscapes - they're surrounded by them. The Aberdeen group got Starscapes, and the Glasgow group got Seascapes."

Each young composer had to write for a trio of Paragon players whose instrumentation was decided by Geddes. The Dumfries and Galloway musicians were allocated French horn, violin and cello. The youngsters in Glasgow got a woodwind trio of flute, clarinet and bassoon. The young composers in the north-east were given a more challenging line-up of vibes, harp and an oboe doubling on cor anglais. "They definitely got the hard end; but they're specialists; they're at a music school."

Geddes visited each area every six weeks or so for teaching, mentoring, monitoring, collective tutorials and one-on-one sessions. Rhythm, he says, was the trickiest issue, on two counts. All of the young musicians could improvise a rhythm instinctively; we all do that every time we drum our fingers on the table. Writing down rhythm was another matter. And he had to encourage them, via rumbas and other looser-limbed rhythms, to break away from four-square rhythms, "where everything sounded like a hymn tune".

Visits by the Paragon players were also factored into the youngsters' school timetables. Every sort of music under the sun emerged, from atmospheres and evocations to sea shanties, narrative pieces, descriptive pieces and storms.

Totting up the total durations of the new pieces in each area, and given that a concert of an hour or so had to be the net result, Geddes the composer put himself on the same playing field as his young charges, writing new short pieces for the instruments, including one quintet and a nonet for all nine Paragon players.

He has been deeply impressed by the youngsters' efforts. And it is a complete exercise: each composer has had to write a programme note to be published with their piece at the concert.

So how impressed has he been? "Some of them will definitely go on. But all these kids are writing better music than I could at their age. I think I've widened their horizons; they've certainly widened mine."

New Vistas rolled out in Castle Douglas and Aberdeen at the beginning of the month. On Sunday, Glasgow's young composers take the stage with the Paragon players premiering their new compositions.

New Vistas: Gilmorehill G12, Sun 30, 3pm; Admission free with ticket: box office 0141 330 5522.