‘Music can have miraculous results.. It can transform lives’

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Fullerton approached me to write the music for her play at the Edinburgh Fringe and then to co-write a musical review and perform in it.”

From there Pat Doyle, as he styled himself then, found a job with TAG, the theatre-in-education company at the Citizens, before being asked by playwright John Byrne to read for the part of Hector in The Slab Boys.

The David Hayman-directed premiere, with Billy McColl, Jim Byars, Robbie Coltrane and Elaine Collins, was a huge hit at Edinburgh’s Traverse Theatre and transferred to London. On the strength of it, Doyle and his wife Leslie, who had studied stage management at the RSAMD and worked as a wardrobe supervisor for stage and TV, moved south.

“The Slab Boys was such a success that casting directors would see me as an actor at the drop of a hat,” Doyle remembers, but he was not willing to let go of his love for music. “I wasn’t happy with life going for auditions, and I felt I needed to pursue my music.”

A meeting with Kenneth Branagh led natural rhythm in the poetry that gives you the basis for a melody.”

For other scores, inspiration can strike less conveniently. “For Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, I heard the Potter Waltz in my head during a meeting and had to ask for paper to jot down the melody line. I don’t compose a piece for film that can’t stand up on a concert stage. Something like Harry in Winter, from the Goblet of Fire score, is written exactly as you’ll hear it in concert.”

But when it comes to a score like that for Brave, there is work to be done on the dynamics for a live performance. “That has had to be rebalanced for this concert, and that’s been months and months of work. Technically there is a lot that has to be done when you are working with human beings playing live.

“I’ve also written an introduction to the Brave concert to introduce the audience to the orchestra and that was two or three days’ work. You have a responsibility to an audience and it has got be pukka for the home crowd. I am really proud to be doing this in Glasgow, I love the place and it was great to me.”

Repaying that debt has included working with young musicians in Lanarkshire and at the Junior Conservatoire in recent years – experiences that Doyle says have been among the most rewarding of his life and a reminder of how fortunate he was to have the instrumental tuition that is now being denied to Scottish youngsters.

“I would urge authorities to think twice. I know things are tough but I would ask them to think hard about impacting on instrumental teaching because I have seen at first hand the miraculous results that music can have on a community. It transforms lives.”

Brave in Concert, with the BBC SSO, is at Glasgow Royal Concert Hall today at 2pm and 5.30pm. Patrick Doyle – A Celebration is at Glasgow City Halls on Thursday at 7.30pm