New works by Ian Wilson will receive first performances during April and May in Ireland and the UK.

Messenger, Wilson’s first violin concerto, will be heard in a new version for violin and 13 instruments when the Los Angeles-based ensemble Camerata Pacifica, together with principal violinist Catherine Leonard, embark on a three-country tour.

This new version was commissioned by Camerata Pacifica and first heard in California in May 2007.

The Irish and UK legs will feature performances at the National Concert Hall, Dublin on 30 April and Derry’s Guildhall and St Anne’s Cathedral, Belfast on 29 April and 3 May respectively. There will also be a performance on 2 May at Wigmore Hall, London.

Wigmore Hall is also the venue, on 7 May, for the first public performance of the fourth book of Wilson’s piano cycle, Stations. Book Three receives its world premiere in Sheffield Cathedral on 25 April. Matthew Schellhorn is the soloist on both occasions.

In May Ian Wilson is the featured composer of this year’s Brighton festival (3-25 May) which will include one world and two UK premieres of his compositions.

The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World, a setting of a short story by Gabriel García Márquez commissioned by the Music in Great Irish Houses Festival and first heard last October in the National Gallery, will receive its first public outing in the UK at 7.30pm on 19 May in a performance by Finghin Collins (piano), Carol McGonnell (clarinet), Elizabeth Cooney (violin) and Antoine Lederlin (cello) with Gavin Friday as narrator.

Earlier that same day, at 1pm, Slava and Leonard Grigoryan will give the world premiere performance of Cast, a new work for two guitars commissioned by the festival.

On 16 May at another lunchtime concert, Wilson’s fourth string quartet, Veer, will be performed in the UK for the first time by the Cappa Quartet.

For details, please see our calendar or visit www.cameratapacifica.org, www.wigmore-hall.org.uk and www.brightonfestival.org.

Posted: 3 March 2008