IAN WILSON’s music has been performed and broadcast on six continents by artists such as the National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland and BBC National Orchestra of Wales, the Ulster, Belgrade Philharmonic and Norwegian Radio Orchestras, the London Mozart Players and the Irish Chamber Orchestra, the Artis, Vogler and Vanbrugh Quartets, Lontano and Avanti! ensembles, Catherine Leonard and Hugh Tinney.

He was born in Belfast in 1964 and obtained the first D.Phil in composition to be awarded by the University of Ulster, which in 1993 commissioned his orchestral work Rise in celebration of the tenth anniversary of its foundation.

Works have been performed at many festivals including the BBC Proms, Venice Biennale, ISCM World Music Days, the Cheltenham, Spitalfields and Bath Festivals and the Ultima Festival in Oslo, where Running, Thinking, Finding for orchestra received the composition prize in 1991.

He has written over seventy works, including two chamber operas, concertos for organ, cello, alto saxophone, violin (three), marimba and piano, orchestral pieces, seven string quartets, four piano trios and many other chamber and vocal works.

In August 2005, Ian Wilson was featured composer at the Presteigne Festival in Wales, where no less than six of his works were performed, including the World Premiere of In fretta, in vento for string orchestra. 

Highlights of 2006 season include the world premiere at Belfast’s Waterfront Hall of Seascape with high cliffs, the commissioned test piece for the European Brass Band Contest, in April; the world premiere of red over black for clarinet, viola and piano at the BBC Proms in August; the world premiere of Schattentiefe, a major work for double bass solo and live DAT recording at the Dublin Fringe Festival in September; the Irish premiere of Licht/ung for orchestra in Dublin’s National Concert Hall by the RTÉ NSOI under Gerhard Markson in October; and the world premiere of Ghosts, a 25-minute work for saxophone quartet at Lithuania’s Iš Arti Festival in November, given by the Amstel Saxophone Quartet.

Future commissions/projects include:

• Heft, a 25-minute work for flute and piano for Camerata Pacifica in Santa Barbara, USA for premiere in Autumn 2007

• A 12-minute work for symphonic wind ensemble, commissioned by the World Association of Symphonic Bands and Ensembles for their 2007 conference, taking place in Kilkenny, Ireland

• A new guitar work for Graham Anthony Devine to premiere at the Derry International Guitar Festival in summer 2007

• Stations – a 14-movement, 75-minute work for solo piano in four ‘Books’ to be written over the next year and performed by British pianist Matthew Schellhorn in 2007 and 2008

• A 20-minute work for clarinet and ensemble for Carol McGonnell and the Argento Ensemble in New York

• A new work to an Irish text for the Carlow Young Artists Choir for 2007

• A new work for choir and electronics for the Ulster Youth Choir for 2007

• A dream of sleep for soprano and small ensemble, commissioned by Camerata Pacifica, to be premiered in late 2008

www.ianwilson.org.uk

Concert Reviews

‘The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World’ for narrator and small ensemble (2007)

“Wilson’s music - now watery and pictorial, now expressive of psychological states, now mysterious and abstract - uncannily captured the story’s strangely winning mix of the macabre and the beautiful, ending with exactly the warm, weird kind of happiness that the author seems to have intended. Entirely in tune with the atmosphere was the narrator Gavin Friday, who revealed in his deep, breathy delivery a twinkling appetite for the morbid as well as an appreciation for the positive human outcome of the story.”

Michael Dungan, Irish Times. October 6th 2007. Gavin Friday, Carol McGonnell, Catherine Leonard, Guy Johnston, Finghin Collins. National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin.

RETURN TO TOP