Composer Rory Boyle is set to reveal two sides to his musical character by premiering two compositions in different Glasgow venues on the same day.

Next Friday, composer Rory Boyle is doing a double act. It's probably not unprecedented, though it is certainly rare outside of a festival format, but Boyle has two premieres of different compositions happening in different venues in Glasgow on the same day.

At lunchtime, he will be conducting what he believes might be the Scottish premiere of his burlesque, Cinderella, at the RSAMD, while, in the evening, he will attend the world premiere of his oboe concerto, Sorella, to be played by the Scottish Chamber Orchestra with the rather elite British team of oboist Nicholas Daniel, one of the finest exponents in the world of his instrument, and conductor Edward Gardner, one of the fastest-rising young UK conductors, now music director of English National Opera.

Before going any further, a large interruption is required because there are three questions that recur about Rory Boyle from different areas of the community. Who is Rory Boyle? Where has he come from? Where has he been?

Boyle, now 55, well-known in the music business and one of the busiest and most versatile composers working on his native turf, laughs in evident appreciation of the irony, while supplying his own headline: "Ah yes: Rory Boyle; the missing years."

So where has he been? The answer is not untypical of one of his generation. An Ayrshireman, he graduated from the RSAMD in 1972, having studied composition with the legendary Frank Spedding. Like many from his time, Boyle then headed south, principally to continue his composition studies with Lennox Berkeley in London.

"Then a sudden reality set in: I had to earn money." So he took a full-time job teaching in Worcestershire. And, though composing continued in what he describes as a "double life", that was basically it for the next 28 years.

From afar, he became aware that, if there had been a renaissance of contemporary music in Scotland, he had missed it by being down south. Further, he became acutely aware of changing perceptions where he was concerned.

"When I left in 1972, I was described as the young Scottish composer'. Then the young' got dropped, then the Scottish', and I was known as the Scots-born' composer. Suddenly, I felt stateless."

That feeling intensified when he received a commission from the National Youth Orchestra of Scotland and, on applying to the Scottish Arts Council for a grant to help pay for copying orchestral parts, was told he was ineligible because he was not resident in Scotland. "I felt a bit like an alien," he says.

Perhaps for all these reasons, he reflects, "on coming back to Scotland in 2000, I found it a little difficult to fit in."

His reasons for returning at all arose out of dramatic personal circumstances: the deaths, in depressingly quick succession, of his sister and mother, about which he speaks privately, profoundly and movingly. Geographically, he has come full circle, living again in South Ayrshire. And if he did miss anything like a Scottish renaissance, he has certainly been caught up in its slipstream.

On arrival back in his homeland, he got a couple of days' teaching at the RSAMD and two years' composition tuition at Douglas Academy, Glasgow. The work profile upped a notch when he landed the unique job of composer laureate for education attached to the City of Edinburgh, a three-year post and the first of its kind, from which three major projects and compositions ensued.

His commitment at the RSAMD, where he is now a lecturer in academic studies and composition, three days a week, has increased and the commissions are stacking up. He's getting his teeth into a large-scale Creative Scotland Award commission, an opera with the working title The Child of Europe; he's writing a violin/viola duet for Angus Ramsay and Steven Shakeshaft; and he has a new brass work under way for the BASBWE brass and wind festival.

Before all that, there are next Friday's premieres. His anarchic account of Cinderella is Roald Dahl's Revolting Rhymes vision of the fairy tale, underpinned by Boyle's music for narrator, woodwinds, piano and percussion: "This Cinderella is more about pantyhose and executions, smelly feet and a rap at the ball, rather than sentiment and Prince Charming."

Cinderella is not new; it was commissioned in 1990 by West Midland Arts and first performed at the Solihull Festival, where it was narrated by Richard Baker and coupled with a performance of Walton's Façade, "with Lady Walton as narrator, dressed in a boa." Cinderella has since received a phenomenal 70-plus performances, especially abroad, and has been recorded commercially.

(In similar vein, Boyle has collabo-rated with Vikram Seth on the author's Beastly Tales.) Boyle is pretty sure Cinderella hasn't been done in Scotland. It's certainly the first time he'll have conducted it himself.

In the evening, the premiere of Sorello is a more serious, personal affair. The concerto is a "very personal tribute" to the composer's sister, Henrietta, who died of cancer in 1998. It is not, he stresses, an elegiac piece. "My sister was a larger-than-life character whose language would turn the air blue."

Nor, he says, would he have dared make it sentimental, though the mood of the first movement is "unsettled" and after a Scherzo, he has allowed himself "a little reflection" in a slow section, but with a positive edge. "Cer- tainly, my sister was at the back of my mind in this but I could just hear her saying, Don't you dare write anything indulgent; none of your saccharine here'."

As for the Italian title, Boyle says: "I couldn't have called it Sister. That has medical or nun-like connotations, neither of which, believe me, would have been at all suitable for this work."

Life has turned for the relaxed and affable Rory Boyle. He's back, his career is once again in the ascendancy, he's practising what he preaches - "composers should be able to turn their hand to anything in any style" - and he has a balance of activities that suits him well.

"I wouldn't be any good stuck in a room just writing dots. I like living quietly in South Ayrshire (near Ballantrae) but I like the buzz of musicians and of being in the city. So I'm lucky. I have the best of both worlds."

Cinderella is at the RSAMD, Glasgow, on March 2 at 1pm. Sorella is at the City Halls, Glasgow, on March 2 and Queen's Hall, Edinburgh, on March 3; both concerts 7.30pm.