Composer Ian Wilson has been appointed to a post-doctoral research fellowship at Dundalk Institute of Technology.

Based in the Department of Music and Creative Media, the 18-month fellowship is attached to An Foras Feasa, a research institute comprising the music departments of Dundalk Institute of Technology, St Patrick's College Drumcondra/Dublin City University, and NUI Maynooth.

Wilson's research project will investigate how traditional Irish musicians 'personalize' Irish tunes through particular kinds of ornamentation and embellishment. The research will identify a number of these gestures and subsequently seek to use them as the basis of new works, in the process seeking a marriage between aspects of traditional Irish music and contemporary art music. Ian will work closely with sean-nós singer Lorcán MacMathúna and with DkIT lecturers, fiddler Gerry O'Connor and composer Rory Walsh.

Ian Wilson was born in Belfast and began composing while studying at the University of Ulster. He has written more than 90 works, including chamber operas, concertos, string quartets, and a range of orchestral and chamber music. His compositions have been performed and broadcast on six continents, and performed at festivals including the BBC Proms, Venice Biennale, Frankfurt Bookfair, ISCM World Music Days, the Cheltenham, Brighton and Bath festivals. In 1991, Running, Thinking, Finding received the composition prize at the Ultima festival in Oslo, and in 1992 he received the Macaulay Fellowship administered by the Arts Council. In 1998 he was elected to Aosdána, Ireland's State-sponsored body of creative artists and from 2000 to 2003 he was AHRB Research Fellow at the University of Ulster. Recordings of his music have been released on the Diatribe, Black Box, Timbre, Riverrun, Guild and Chandos labels, among others. His music is published by Ricordi (London) and Universal Edition.

Posted: 27 April 2009