ANNA Meredith suspects that the Royal College of Music may not realise what it has done. At 24, she has been made the Constant and Kit Lambert junior fellow of the college, specialising in composition. Essentially, that means this young woman, who has blazed a trail through Napier University, the University of York, and the RCM, will have two years to concentrate 100% on her composing, sustained by the fellowship.

As she puts it, she is the first girl to be given the fellowship, as well as being the first non-Oxbridge graduate. ''Usually it is awarded to articulate, quiet men. Now they've got this babbling Scots girl.''

It is a smart move on the evidence of her most widely-heard piece, the first she wrote for an orchestra. Torque was broadcast on BBC Radio 3 in March from a performance recorded at Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival last year, when it was played by the BBC Philharmonic under James MacMillan. It had its London premiere in June at the RCM concert hall. Her performance history stretches back to 1997, when a piece was played at an Edinburgh Contemporary Arts Trust concert when she was at Napier.

Meredith, who was brought up in South Queensferry, left Napier aged 19 with an HND in musical studies, having studied composition with Kenneth Dempster and clarinet with Alison Waller. York University awarded her first-class honours for her BA in music and she ran the university's new music group. Her studies at the Royal College produced an MMus with distinction. Speak to more established talents and they are sure to bemoan the lack of opportunities for their music to be heard. Meredith is singing an altogether different tune.

''I am positive about how much contemporary music is played. There are more things opening than closing. The Huddersfield festival is less geeky and well marketed, and I feel under no pressure to justify

the music I like. It is a good time to be yourself.''

The way Meredith sees the music world, in its widest sense, there is more choice, and people are seizing the opportunity to hear something new. Only in London is the picture distorted, because the daunting prospect of travel in the capital means that people will only go to what they know they'll like.

''I grew up playing in the Edinburgh Youth Orchestra, but also listening to pop and dance music. To be honest, I don't think too much about where my music comes from.''

On a brief visit home during the Edinburgh Festival, Meredith's live listening took in the music of Terra-folk, Indian Ocean, and the Soweto Gospel Choir as enthusiastically as the BBC SSO's all-Messiaen programme at the Usher Hall.

''Being a composer, you have to have a mind that is open to films and books, too,'' she adds.

Her writing now has a broad reach, but it is one that she has consciously developed. As a clarinet player, she began by writing pieces for woodwind.

For other instruments, she would seek out someone in the music department to test out an idea,

or have a friend play trombone down the phone to her dictation. She made percussion her second study, then worked on strings,

then brass.

''You need to feel confident for every section,'' she says. When I'd written a part, I'd take it to the pub and show it to other students. Folk were always telling me to put it away, but it is a collaborative process. You are half way there if the players like what you do.''

Meredith's latest commission is for the Ionian Singers and working on word-setting is a new experience. She says: ''I want to write idiomatically for voices. I want to be a performer's composer.''

Having just taken part in the

Britten-Pears contemporary performance and composition course (which has produced a piece for the Aldeburgh festival next year), where she studied with Oliver Knussen and Magnus Lindberg, Meredith exudes confidence in her writing. ''In this country you are still a young composer when you are 40, but I am writing pieces now that are not so transitional.''

Two years ago the Britten Sinfonia played her Dragonfly (she cringes at the title), which she now dismisses as ''too dense''. ''It taught me to strip things away, to ask, 'Is this note necessary?' There needs to be something for the ear to cling to with no clutter. I want to be unambiguous.''

Torque is more along the lines she wants to pursue. ''It is a very

blocky and punchy score. It

makes its point. James MacMillan was very supportive and very positive about it.''

As a review in The Herald noted at the time, it was telling that MacMillan reordered the published programme, placing Meredith's piece as the climax to the concert.

The composer makes no secret of her pleasure. ''I always seem to be first or last in the programme. It's a good thing - either it sets the mood or wraps things up.''

That structural mindset is part of being Meredith. She talks of composing in geometrical terms, building up shapes.

Among the work she did to earn money before she was awarded the fellowship was a stint at the British Music Information Centre making scores. She reckons she should now give lessons in photocopying to fellow composers to save them wasting valuable rehearsal time because of ill-prepared parts.

All this expertise is now at the service Milngavie Young Singers after Meredith requested a placement with a Scottish ensemble under the Adopt A Composer scheme run by the Society for the Promotion of New Music), allowing her to come home regularly during her fellowship years. Meanwhile, in London, on November 16 at the Royal Festival Hall, Meredith will be the subject of a portrait concert of her chamber works, alongside Emily Hall, as part of the Philharmonia Orchestra's Music of Today series. It is an event that is sure to give

another boost to the profile of this fast-rising young writer.