M E McIntyre is a part-time composer and ex-professional violinist. He has lectured on the deepest connections between music and mathematics. He was consultant to the Theatre de Complicite, for their play `A Disappearing Number' recently performed at the Barbican Theatre. Following his retirement from his day job as a scientist in September 2008, he hopes to become musically active again.

One of his favourite things is to compose music, or rather to let music grow, from the seeds provided by friends' telephone numbers. Sometimes this helps to celebrate special occasions. The more unmusical-sounding the telephone number, the more interesting the challenge!

The great composer Leos Janacek spoke of the silence in which `sounds shape themselves', and the great mathematician J.E. Littlewood of `giving the subconscious a chance'. Such inner games are not only spiritually uplifting and life-affirming but have also been part of a quest to understand the deeply mysterious phenomenon we call music, its evolutionary origins, and the extent of its kinship with mathematics.