Musical milestone for Marcus Tristan Heathcock

Marcus Tristan Heathcock will soon have composed more symphonies than Beethoven or Mahler - as well as having a "hip hop" number one album in Russia under his belt.

The 43-year-old, of Bowling Green Road, Stourbridge, composed his first piece for the piano at the age of three — before he could even play the instrument.

He is now associate composer for the St Petersburg State Symphony Orchestra Klassika in Russia and is in the process of writing his 10th symphony, to be dedicated to the love of his life, Faith Pentland, aged 32, also from Stourbridge.

An opera and an 11th symphony, based upon the ancient Assyrian king Esarhaddon and produced in association with the British Museum, are also taking shape.

"My music is quite approachable — although I have my own language, which is 21st century, I am not avant garde," said Marcus, who has a 13-year-old daughter Vanessa, from his marriage to a Russian woman, Valentina.

"The classical composers I love are Schumann, Schubert and Mozart, although I also enjoy folk music, The Beatles and Led Zeppelin. And I have even recorded a hip hop album called Salaam Alei Kum Brother — meaning "Hello Brother" in Arabic — which reached number one in Russia in about 2005."

Marcus's father, 69-year-old Frank Heathcock, also of Bowling Green Road, is an amateur recorder and keyboard player, and his mother, now Mrs Jenny Owen, of Robin's Close, Oldswinford, Stourbridge, sings for Kidderminster Choral Society.

The young composer began writing music even before he could read, when he produced "Minuet in E flat" for the piano at the age of three. He started piano lessons a couple of years later.

He attended Stourbridge's Elmfield School and did his A levels at the town's King Edward VI Sixth Form College in Lower High Street, where he used to compose music for the orchestra, helping it to win the National Festival of Music in 1987, under head of music, John Griswold.

The college is in the same building where Led Zeppelin's Robert Plant went to the former King Edward VI Grammar School.

After leaving the Royal Academy of Music with an honours degree in musical composition in 1990, Marcus worked as a teacher at Elmfield School, where he first met his current partner, Faith, who was then a pupil, and where he also taught theory of music to celebrated flautist Eliza Marshall.

Marcus and Faith's paths crossed again in Stourbridge last year, when they fell for each other. They are now planning to move to live in the Glasgow area together, and eventually get married. "I have composed literally hundreds of pieces of music and am currently writing my 10th symphony, to be dedicated to my love for Faith, which will be played first by the St Petersburg State Symphony Orchestra Klassika," said Marcus.

"I recently also became fascinated by the life of Esarhaddon, who was King of Assyria in 600BC and who conquered Egypt, despite being slightly deformed and suffering from an illness that meant he had to keep out of the sun.

"I have been working on it with Dr Irving Finkel, senior Assyriologist at the British Museum, who tried to make enquiries through the opera house in Baghdad about Esarhaddon but was warned we could get death threats if we tried to perform it in Iraq because the Islam world does not recognise the ancient civilisation."