The Guardian There is a fax machine in the toilet of Colin Matthews's house in Wandsworth, south London, and a large pile of recent communications. Their location is open to several interpretations, but the one I prefer is that Matthews is always active, working, thinking of ways to propagate contemporary music in his many guises. As composer, teacher, administrator and record producer, he has taken on a task that would have given Sisyphus pause for thought. Record companies are often loath to commit it to disc.
Audiences are small.
Few composers, even those as established as Matthews, can make a living from their compositions alone. It is a vicious circle that only we, the prospective audience, can break. If we withdrew our labour, nobody would notice, and quite a few people would give a cheer. That bleak statement is hard to square with the evangelising Matthews, who produces records of British contemporary music on the NMC label, helps run the Holst and Britten estates, and has been made professor of composition at the Royal College of Music - and so it proves. The panic seems to have passed.