Andrew Baldwin finally received the mail he had been waiting for.
The 16-year-old had entered the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra's young composers' competition but exams in Dunedin had prevented him travelling to Auckland to hear the piece performed.
When he put on the compact disc that had been delivered to his door, it was the first time he had heard his music played by a professional ensemble.
Eleven years later, on a rare trip back to Dunedin, he recalls how he ran around the house excited.
''I was really happy with it. It was a pretty amazing feeling and those sorts of things just spur you on to keep writing.''
Now aged 27, the young composer still gets a ''buzz'' when he hears his music performed by a school choir, ensemble, chamber music group or orchestra: ''You're imagining what it's going to sound like and sometimes it can completely surprise you.''
In 2004, the year after he first took part in the Auckland competition, he entered again and won.
He then did a bachelor of music degree (hons) in Wellington and a master's in composition at the Royal College of Music in London, a prestigious school housed in turreted buildings that he had once photographed but had never imagined attending.
The first time, he was one of a handful of international students to be selected but could not raise the nearly $NZ55,000 in annual fees he needed.
''I was pretty gutted ... But it just made me more determined to go [the next year].''
Intent on making the most of the opportunity, Baldwin says he spent ''really long hours'' perfecting ''really small sections''.
''In both years, for the two weeks leading up to portfolio hand-in, I did this strange sleep cycle where you sleep for half an hour every four hours and you just work through the whole day and night.
"When I got to the end of my studies, I was exhausted. I didn't compose for six to eight months afterwards.''
''I'd submitted everything, passed and graduated so that was what I'd hoped to achieve. But the main achievement was that I felt like I'd progressed really far and that was very much to do with my teachers.''
High school music teachers Aart Brusse and Philippa Hosken were the ones who encouraged Baldwin to focus on composition.
As a youngster, he had learned the piano and oboe, also taking singing lessons and singing in the New Zealand Secondary Schools Choir and the New Zealand Youth Choir.
More recently, the tenor has been a member of the Holst Singers (director Stephen Layton is also director of music at Trinity College, Cambridge) and had his own choral music commissioned by a range of groups, from the Auckland Youth Choir to St Paul's Covent Garden Choir in London.
Writing the score for a ballet performed by the English National Ballet last year has been one of the highlights of his career so far, he says.
Another was serving as composer-in-residence at the Wellington Cathedral of St Paul and hearing its choir perform his music in Westminster Abbey and St Paul's Cathedral, London, and at Notre-Dame in Paris where it sang a whole Mass setting that he had written.
In the next five to 10 years, Baldwin plans to spend most of his time overseas, working with choirs in Europe and doing further study.
He is also writing an opera with a Maori legend theme.
''I feel like I've still got quite a way to go but that I'm finally making headway and making a name for myself,'' he says.
''I'm trying to develop my own musical style ... and that takes time.''
