A COMPOSER from Shelley has reached the finals of a competition to find Yorkshire's newest creative talent.

Laurence Rose has composed a six-minute work, In a Quiet Place, which was inspired by the silence of thick snow at Stickle Tarn in the Lakeland fells.

The piece will be played by the Sinfonia of Leeds in a rehearsal on Monday.

The players will choose their favourite piece from four finalists and the orchestra will perform the winning entry in public for the first time in the Great Hall of Leeds University on February 4.

Mr Ross sang a lot at school, played jazz flute and was part of a singing group. But he gave it all up when he went to university.

He said: "I let it slide for almost 30 years, until as a personal treat for my 44th birthday I bought some books on composition."

Three years later - and entirely self-taught - he has had pieces played at workshops at summer schools, but says there was no competitive element.

He added: "This is the closest I've got to a proper public performance. It's quite a milestone."

Mr Ross is the north-west director of the RSPB bird charity and his work covers 10 counties from its area headquarters in Denby Dale.

The competition, organised by the Sinfonia, was open to unpublished and unperformed works by composers living in Yorkshire.

The other finalists are a Leeds musician, a Leeds composer/conductor and a vicar from Pudsey.

Mr Ross says he is a "pencil and manuscript paper man" and works to no set pattern and uses a computer for skeletal and harmonic structure and notation.

He added: "My wife, Jane, and I climbed from Grasmere to Stickle Tarn in thick snow. There was nobody about and we contemplated the utter silence.

"It's that mood that is reflected in my composition, which has an extremely quiet start and finish."

The Sinfonia's next concert is is at 7.30pm tonight in Leeds University's Great Hall.

It features Richard Hewitt as soloist in Mozart's Oboe Concerto, the Overture to The Marriage of Figaro and Bruckner's Symphony No 7.

Tickets cost £10 (£8 concessions). Under-16s can get in free if accompanied by an adult.