It is hard to know whether I have caught Sally Beamish on a creative cusp, or whether this is how life always is at her home in the Scottish village of Gartmore.

Beamish welcomes me with the news that she has just posted off the final version of Shenachie, her musical, which will be produced next month as part of a competition sponsored by the West End impresario Cameron Mackintosh. Minutes later the Canadian opera director Robert Carsen, who is to stage it, is on the phone. We have barely sat down when Beamish's 10-year-old daughter Stephanie saunters in to ask where her score is: she will sing one of the main roles. Next to turn up is Beamish's teenage son Tom, fixing a gig for his band for which he and elder brother Laurie write all the songs. And Robert Irvine, Beamish's cellist husband, is due back tomorrow from Orkney, where he has been performing and teaching at the St Magnus festival.