Michael Bawtree is a very busy man. The name and face of the 33-year-old conductor, organist, pianist and harpsichordist might not yet be wholly familiar to the vast majority of music lovers who haunt Scotland's music halls; but he is increasingly ubiquitous on the scene, and it is highly likely that awareness of him and his work is set to spread even more rapidly.

Look at his recent track record. If you were at the RSNO's huge performance of Vaughan Williams's Sea Symphony, that was Bawtree playing the organ in Glasgow Royal Concert Hall. If you attended the BBC SSO's concert that featured the astonishing soprano Ailish Tynan singing Mozart, Bawtree was the man playing continuo organ. If you attended the SSO's Hear and Now Portrait concert of Michel Van der Aa, the harpsichord wizardry in that concert was courtesy of the versatile Mr Bawtree.

Or you might have seen him conducting Haydn's Creation with the Edinburgh Royal Choral Union at St Cuthbert's Parish Church in the capital less than a fortnight ago; or, just a few nights ago, conducting the Glasgow Chamber Choir in Perth and in Glasgow in a fascinating programme of music by Britten and Purcell.

In and around all this, Bawtree plays the organ each Sunday in his local parish church on the south side of Glasgow, while teaching in the RSAMD where, last week, he was examining the academy's BEd students.

On another stage, you might have glimpsed him conducting one of some 15 performances with Scottish Ballet of Tchaikovsky's Sleeping Beauty over the past year or so; or conducting a staged performance in the round of Mozart's opera La Clemenza di Tito in St Cecilia's Hall, or, just a few weeks ago, conducting a performance in Greyfriars Kirk of Berlioz's Harold in Italy with the Edinburgh Symphony Orchestra.

And, as you read this, he's probably packing his bag and his scores to get on the road again, this time to Orkney for the St Magnus Festival, where he will be in residence as one of two staff pianists to the festival's annual conducting course, and will appear at a St Magnus Cathedral concert, providing organ accompaniment to the Huddersfield Choral Society.

RSNO audiences in Glasgow will get a chance to hear Bawtree in all his organistic glory at two performances, in Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, of Saint-Saens's blazing and voluptuously beautiful Organ Symphony later in the summer, while, later again, Bawtree will make his conducting debut with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra in an Edinburgh Royal Choral Union anniversary concert in the Usher Hall.

So who is this clearly remarkable young man, whose career is developing in leaps and bounds?

I actually came across him some years ago when he was conducting a concert at the RSAMD. The details of the concert are long forgotten, but I was sufficiently struck that I approached a former senior staff member at the academy to ask who Bawtree was.

The next time I saw him in action, an occasion not to be forgotten, he was conducting the premiere performance of Gareth Williams's amazing opera, Love in the Blue Corner, which catapulted the young Williams into the spotlight and led directly to the commissioning of two mini operas in successive years from Williams by Scottish Opera.

As fast as things happened for Gareth Williams, they were racing ahead at equal velocity for Bawtree, who only arrived in Scotland in 2004, having taken one of those crossroads decisions from which point everything has changed in his musical life.

He started life (his words) as an organist, and the organ remains central to his musical activities. As a young lad from the Devon/Dorset area, the young Bawtree received early lessons about the peripatetic life he would come to lead. His dad was a navy man, and, from a young age, Michael was on the move, living all over the world, from Portugal to Bermuda.

He went to Cambridge as an organ scholar, and subsequently taught in York for a couple of years. Then he moved to Bury St Edmunds for "a five-year stint" as assistant organist at the cathedral, where he found his spiritual home. "I could have stayed in Suffolk forever; it was a glorious place to be." And not a word yet about conducting.

Then came a critical moment, though Bawtree didn't appreciate it at the time. He was on a committee of the Assistant Cathedral Organists' Association, and there was a realisation that moving up to the senior role of cathedral organist would then entail conducting.

"So it was decided that we should try and get an orchestral conducting session booked for everybody." They looked for a versatile expert and booked Martyn Brabbins, among the most experienced and respected of British conductors.

"It has to be said that there was a distinct lack of interest from the other organists," recalls Bawtree.

He was sufficiently enthused, however, to approach Brabbins and ask what he should do for more experience. Brabbins, recognising Bawtree's potential, was decisive: "Come to Glasgow." And in 2004 that's precisely what Bawtree did, signing up for the post-graduate conducting course at the RSAMD, where he studied with Alasdair Mitchell, though grabbing tuition from every resident and visiting conductor who passed through the city, including Stephane Deneve, Ilan Volkov and Alexander Titov.

He also secured for hiself access to BBC and RSNO rehearsals, observing at close quarters how things get done (or don't get done) and how things work (or don't).

Things accelerated after he completed his degree, graduating in 2006. One of his examiners was Richard Honner, music director of Scottish Ballet.

Honner brought him over to Scottish Ballet straight from the academy and asked him to cover for him as he had to go to Hong Kong for a week.

It was in at the deep end and a breathtaking introduction for Bawtree into the way things actually work. "The ballet orchestra, doing six shows a week, with 55 Sleeping Beauty performances last season, probably play more shows together than symphony orchestras." For his debut there was no formal rehearsal: "just a 10-minute seating call and off they went".

That might have been a debut, but Bawtree hadn't exactly been hanging about. In 2005, shortly after he arrived in Scotland, the position of chorus director at the Edinburgh Royal Choral Union (ERCU) became vacant, as did the musical directorship of the smaller, more specialist Glasgow Chamber Choir. He applied and got them both; which meant Bawtree held two significant conducting directorships and he hadn't even graduated.

He took over ERCU at a difficult time for the chorus, displaced from its Usher Hall home, and operating out of the smaller St Cuthbert's Parish Church, a situation Bawtree feels he has been able to use to the advantage of the chorus in terms of repertoire expansion and continuity - they haven't brought in guest conductors since they had to leave the big hall, so the new chorus director and his troops have been able to get to know each other intimately.

They'll be back in the Usher Hall with a bang with the SCO, Michael Bawtree conducting, and a new anniversary commission from composer Judith Bingham, in the autumn.

For Bawtree, who manages to fit in teaching BEd and BMus students at the RSAMD along with all of his other activities, it means a busy life.

"It's long days and long evenings. But that's life, and I'm not very good at doing nothing."