Composer Ian Wilson has a number of important performances and commissions lined up for 2007.

Ian Wilson has received Project funding from the Arts Council to create a new 25-minute work called re:play, for improvising saxophonist, string quartet, piano and double bass. The project will involve Cathal Roche (saxophones), the RTÉ Vanbrugh Quartet, Hugh Tinney (piano) and Malachy Robinson (double bass), and the première will take place during the West Cork Chamber Music Festival in July. The work will contain a number of ‘windows’ for improvisation by Cathal Roche while the remaining musicians continue to play through-composed music, and the material will be based on rhythmic motifs from Beckett’s stage work Play.

In his second commission for the coming year, he will be writing a work for narrator, clarinet, violin, piano and cello, called The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World, based on a short story of the same name by Gabriel García Márquez. The work was commissioned by the Music in Great Irish Houses Festival and the performers will be Carol McGonnell, Finghin Collins, Catherine Leonard and Guy Johnston; the actor has yet to be announced.

He has also been commissioned through Wexford County Council’s Per Cent for Art Music Commission scheme to create a new 50- to 60-minute work for combined choirs in the Wexford area for performance in 2008.

The US premiere of Ghosts for saxophone quartet will take place in New York’s Carnegie Hall in April. The performers will be the Amstel Quartet from Amsterdam, for whom this 25-minute piece was written. The world premiere of his piano concerto Limena in a new version for piano and string quartet will take place in February in the Jacqueline du Pré Hall, Oxford, performed by Matthew Schellhorn and the Carducci Quartet. Further performances are planned in Sheffield and at London’s Second Glance Festival in May.

He has also received funding from the Music Network-administered Recording Scheme and Leitrim County Council’s Artist Bursary scheme to make a CD of four works for string orchestra. The performers will be the Belgrade Strings, their leader Gordana Matijevi-Nedeljkovi and British pianist Matthew Schellhorn, and the recording will be released on the Riverrun label. Two works for string orchestra (The Capsizing Man and other stories and In fretta, in vento), one for piano and strings (Limena) and one for violin and strings (Sullen earth) will be recorded in Belgrade in July, with the composer conducting.

For further details on the above concerts, please visit our Calendar.

Posted: 27 January 2007