Colin Matthews is one of Britain's most best respected contemporary composers. He studied classics at the University of Nottingham, and then studied composition there with Arnold Whittall, and at the same time with Nicholas Maw. In the 1970s he taught at Sussex University and completed a doctorate on the works of Mahler. During this time he also worked with Benjamin Britten and Imogen Holst. Currently he is the administrator of the Holst Foundation, a trustee of the Britten-Pears Foundation, and the founder of the influential record label NMC. The interview was conducted by e-mail over a few days in November 1999, and is particularly interesting in the light of the mild controversy caused by the successful first performance of Pluto: see Raymond Head's review in Tempo 213.)