Write about what you know is the advice routinely offered to budding novelists. It�s a method that can prove productive for composers, too, if James Ross�s work is any guide.

Write about what you know is the advice routinely offered to budding novelists. It's a method that can prove productive for composers, too, if James Ross's work is any guide. The Caithness-born pianist and composer returns to his native heath with his latest commission, Chasing the Sun, which forms a central plank in the Highlands' musical celebration Blas 2008.

Opening this weekend, the festival features performances from Irish traditional music legends The Chieftains, Scotland's favourite traditional music duo, Phil Cunningham and Aly Bain and the popular Irish-American group Cherish the Ladies, among a host of other estimable talents, taking place from Skye and Lochalsh to Caithness. For Ross, being given Blas's second commission - fiddler Duncan Chisholm opened this strand of the festival last year with his multi-media work, Kin - is an honour as well as a homecoming.

It's now 12 years since Edinburgh-based Ross left Wick to study at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama in Glasgow.

Subsequent studies in Limerick with Micheal O Suilleabhain - whose pioneering work on piano and in combining traditional-styled composition with orchestration remains a benchmark in the form generally as well as an influence on Ross - have been followed by a two-week course during last year's St Magnus Festival on Orkney with composers Sally Beamish and Alasdair Nicholson. The Herald's arts editor, Keith Bruce, was particularly impressed with the fruits of this association, singling out Ross's composition for string trio, clarinet and piano for special praise.

Before that, Ross had earned enthusiastic responses for his Celtic Connections 2005 New Voices commission, An Cuan, and a full scale orchestral work for the Caithness Orchestra, both of which drew inspiration from the landscape and coastlines where Ross grew up. It's not homesickness, he insists, that keeps him returning to Caithness for inspiration, although he can appreciate why it might seem that way.

"There's something reassuring about places you've known all your life, obviously, but I find that every time I go back to Caithness I'll see small differences. Maybe it's something I didn't notice before or maybe it's just the way I remember certain things. But I find looking at the coastline - with its visual drama and the rhythm of the sea - brings out musical ideas and makes me want to describe it, or at least try and capture it."

The difference between Chasing the Sun and its predecessors is that, this time, Ross has collaborated with a visual artist, Catriona Murray, whose photographs form an integral part of the presentation. This, to some extent, got him over the fear of confronting the blank sheet of paper that can often be such a hurdle for writers and composers, although once Murray had passed her pictures on to him, he was left to his own devices.

"Yeah, I still had to come up with the music but having the pictures to write to was really helpful," he says. "Working with Catriona generally was really inspiring. It felt like a real collaboration because we spent about two weeks going round locations, visiting at different times of day - because places look totally different at sunset compared to, say, the early afternoon, and we wanted to get the different shades and colours that creep in.

"Catriona's an amazing photographer with such a great eye for detail and moods, and just spending time with her and chatting about what we both wanted to bring to the project was really, really useful for me from a practical point of view."

The music itself is written for the Mr McFall's Chamber string quartet and Fraser Fifield's soprano saxophone, whistles and smallpipes.

Ross, whose talents as a session pianist are still sought after - recent work has included harper Ailie Robertson's album, First Things First, and the outstanding fiddler Lauren MacColl's When Leaves Fall CD - will play piano himself.

"When I wrote that piece in Orkney someone else played the piano part and I was able to sit and listen in the audience, which was a great experience because I could listen more objectively," he says. "But I also really enjoy being part of the band because the music tends to develop with every performance and in this case the tunes go through quite a few changes as they're played. The piece is in six movements, which are six traditional-style melodies that I've written and one might, for example, begin as a slow air and finish off as a reel."

As well as composing the sort of music that he likes to play, he has written Chasing the Sun with the other musicians specifically in mind. Fifield's tone on soprano sax particularly was a sound that Ross could carry around in his head quite happily while he was putting notes on the page and the McFall's Chamber players he speaks about with more of a fan's admiration than a colleague's.

"What I like particularly about the McFall's guys is they seem to be able to move effortlessly between musical styles, and I love people who can do that," he says. "There are quite a lot of different influences in my music and even if it's not obvious, you probably can't listen to a jazz musician like Esbjorn Svensson, who's a big favourite of mine, and not pick up something from him. I did listen to quite a lot of string quartet music before I started writing but I also knew from hearing the McFall's that whatever I wrote they'd be able to make it come alive."

• James Ross's Chasing the Sun plays Coigach Community Hall, Achiltibuie on Tuesday September 9; Assembly Rooms, Wick on Wednesday September 10; and Resolis Memorial Hall, Balblair, Black Isle on Thursday September 11. Blas 2008 runs from Friday September 5 to Saturday September 13.