"Leide Beag" (2020) is a four-movement work inspired by the celebrated Irish language texts of the Aistriú collection, housed in NUI Galway. The work explores migration from different points of view in texts either originally in Irish or translated into that language. The work was commissioned by Galway 2020 for the Tonnta vocal group (Dublin), led by Robbie Blake. The singers are directed on this premiere recording by Sinead Hayes.
The four movements are:
0:00 "Fáilte Uí Donnchú" (Louis de Paor)
6:36 "Leide beag" (Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill)
13:23 "Gluaiseacht" (Alan Titley)
19:53 "Cuireadh do Mhuire" (Máirtín Ó Direáin)

Leide Beag (vocal ensemble)

My 2012 work for baritone saxophone and Boss RC-300 loopstation - the first ever work notated for this combination - performed by my friend and longtime collaborator Ties Mellema. 

The recording is of a live performance - no overdubs & no pre-records!

The piece uses what I call Evolutionary Looping - rather than the simple vertical stacking one hears a lot from performers using loopstations, this work - inspired by the performances of World Looping Champion Shlomo - functions as much on the horizontal as the vertical, building up layers, breaking them down again and morphing from one thing to another in the process.

motherFUNK! (baritone saxophone & loopstation)

‘The Seventh Seal’ (2020) was inspired by the famous 1957 Ingmar Bergman film of the same name. When approached by double bassist Malachy Robinson with the idea of writing a concerto for cello, double bass and strings I immediately thought of how the two soloists could engage in a series of musical conversations, and having had the Bergman film in mind for some time for a different project I thought of the many two-handed conversations there are in that work – for instance, between the Knight and Death who play chess with each other, between the Knight and a young woman accused of witchcraft, between the knight's squire and a painter depicting gruesome events on the wall of a church, between the actor and his wife about blissfully domestic affairs, etc. Many of these conversations are about existential ideas - the existence of God versus nothingness; what is Death?; the difficulty of faith; the place of love.

I took a number of these conversations as starting points for this single-movement, multi-sectional, free-flowing work that explores the two solo instruments in terms of colour and expressiveness, exploits the tutti string section in inventive ways, and seeks to present the fear, the love, the tenderness, and the inevitability which mark the film so strongly. A Medieval Swedish melody appears near the end, referencing the simplicity of the Knight’s conversation with his wife when he finally reaches home after years of travel – this melody also reflects the time and place the film is set in. After that we have the final Dance of Death.

‘The Seventh Seal’ was commissioned by the Irish Chamber Orchestra with funds from the Arts Council of Ireland. The performers on the recording are cellist Christian Elliott and double bassist Malachy Robinson with the Irish Chamber Orchestra conducted by Thomas Zehetmair.

The Seventh Seal (double concerto for cello, double bass & strings)

'TOTEMIC' (2020)began as a response to Luciano Berio’s piece for viola and percussion “Naturale”, which is based on Sicilian folk songs. My piece focuses one Irish song, “The Mountain Streams”, but uses an original melody I wrote in 2009 when I was engaged in research into sean-nós ornamentation. This melody appears throughout the piece in different guises, usually in elongated fragments, but the essential character of sean-nós singing and ornamentation is, to my mind, present throughout.
At the same time, the piece is an exploration of some more ethereal sounds that viola and percussion can produce individually and together, building upon recent works I composed for solo violin and solo cello by incorporating a range of sounds and gestures which have timbral, motivic and dramatic value for the piece.
Finally, a fragment of my 1996 piano piece “A Haunted Heart” appears near the end, as a farewell to a unique person in my life who had recently passed away.

'TOTEMIC' was co-commissioned by Belfast Music Society, SOUND Aberdeen, and New Music Dublin. The performers are Nathan Sherman viola and Alex Petcu, percussion. The recording appears on the Ergodos album "Totemic" (2022).

TOTEMIC (viola & percussion)

'TUNDRA' (2008) was originally a multi-media dance work, a collaboration between composer Ian Wilson, dancer/choreographer/filmmaker Anne Gilpin, and lighting designer Conleth White. The music features the Cork-born trumpeter Mark O’Keeffe, principal trumpet with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra.
'TUNDRA' is an electroacoustic work, and its sound design was made in close collaboration with the University of Limerick’s Jürgen Simpson.
The sources of inspiration come from the Wordsworth poem 'Composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey' and a photograph by American photographer Laura Gilpin called 'The Prairie'. Ideas of solitude and landscape predominate in a work which seeks to create an environment where the listener can immerse himself in a whirlpool of intense visual elements.
'TUNDRA' was funded by an Arts Council of Ireland Project award.
The sections, which run continuously, are:
I Pre-Prologue
II Prologue
III 1st Part
IV Interlude 1
V 2nd Part
VI Interlude 2
VII 3rd Part
VIII Interlude 3
IX 4th Part
X 5th Part

TUNDRA (trumpet solo/soundtrack/electroacoustic)

"Marianas" for contrabass clarinet & ensemble (2022).
When Sarah Watts told me she was buying a contrabass clarinet, I immediately wanted to write something for her new instrument.
I have always been drawn to deep-registered instruments, something about the textures and colours they produce, and so with the support of the Northern Ireland Arts Council I set about composing something inspired by the Mariana Trench ('Marianas' in Spanish), the deepest place in the ocean. At those depths all is dark, the inhabitants are strange and even frightening, and there are all sorts of unusual sounds and sights. All these ideas fed into the new work, which while deep- and dark-hued, is full of colour and surprise.
Written with funds from the Arts Council of Northern Ireland.
The performers on this recording are Sarah Watts and the Hard Rain SoloistEnsemble.

Marianas (contrabass clarinet & ensemble)

'Her charms invited'(2010) was inspired by, and based upon, various types of ornamentation used in sean-nós (traditional Irish) singing, here re-contextualized through use of a contemporary musical language. This is the third in a series of pieces exploring this area, following on from 'Where the moorcocks crow' for alto saxophone and saxophone quartet and 'The linnet sings her note so pleasing' for quartertone bass flute and live electronics. These three pieces are also linked by their use – however distantly or fragmentarily – of an original melody I wrote to the old Irish song 'The mountain streams'.
The performers on the recording are the Vanbrugh Quartet.

Chamber

Her charms invited (string quartet #12)

'Three Songs of Home' for alto flute, viola and harp is an evocative work in five movements, inspired by the work of Irish poet Tony Curtis, specifically five poems from his collection 'Three Songs of Home'. It was written for, and premièred by, Camerata Pacifica on the occasion of its 25th anniversary season.

Three Songs of Home (alto flute, harp & viola)

My 2006 'setting' of a text by Oskar Kokoschka for choir and saxophone quartet, performed here by the BBC Singers and the Rascher Saxophone Quartet.

Little red fish (SATB choir & saxophone quartet)

"Scully" is a 6-movement, 25-minute work for solo percussion where each movement responds to one of the six paintings in the Hugh Lane Gallery's Scully Room. This, like Tate Modern's Rothko Room, is one of my favourite and most visited art spaces, and I was delighted to be asked to respond musically to these fantastic paintings.
Indeed, my work is a series of responses rather than a set of interpretations or even "translations" into music. I looked at various aspects of each painting to feed my responses, including form, warmth/coolness, repetition, drama, and of course colour. Between my two most recent preparatory visits to the Scully Room a small painting called "Sanda" appeared near the entrance, and so I added a short introductory movement to my compositional scheme which responds to the cross-like structure of the painting as well as its combination of very disparate elements in music which reflects similar structural and pitch ideas (in the combination of log drum and 2-tone toy instrument in its 2nd half, for instance).
One of the central conceits of these first performances is that the percussionist - Alex Petcu, with whom I have collaborated many times now - has a different instrumental set-up for each movement. The different set-ups are placed near the relevant paintings so that the musical journey, inspired by the six paintings in order, is reflected in Alex's physical journey around the room. The audience participates in this unusual voyage, experiencing a conversation between the two art forms for the period in which the paintings and the music occupy the same time and space.

"Scully" was commissioned by the Sundays at Noon concert series with funds from the Hugh Lane Gallery and the Arts Council of Ireland.

"Sanda", movement I from "Scully" for solo percussion

"Scully" is a 6-movement, 25-minute work for solo percussion where each movement responds to one of the six paintings in the Hugh Lane Gallery's Scully Room. This, like Tate Modern's Rothko Room, is one of my favourite and most visited art spaces, and I was delighted to be asked to respond musically to these fantastic paintings.
Indeed, my work is a series of responses rather than a set of interpretations or even "translations" into music. I looked at various aspects of each painting to feed my responses, including form, warmth/coolness, repetition, drama, and of course colour. 
"Wall of Light Alba" inspired the idea of bright ringing music and I asked for almglocken (bright cowbell-like instruments) plus 3 suspended cymbals, heard at the beginning, to explore this colour/mood.
One of the central conceits of these first performances is that the percussionist - Alex Petcu, with whom I have collaborated many times now - has a different instrumental set-up for each movement. The different set-ups are placed near the relevant paintings so that the musical journey, inspired by the six paintings in order, is reflected in Alex's physical journey around the room. The audience participates in this unusual voyage, experiencing a conversation between the two art forms for the period in which the paintings and the music occupy the same time and space.

"Scully" was commissioned by the Sundays at Noon concert series with funds from the Hugh Lane Gallery and the Arts Council of Ireland.

"Wall Of Light Alba", movement II from "Scully" for solo percussion

"Scully" is a 6-movement, 25-minute work for solo percussion where each movement responds to one of the six paintings in the Hugh Lane Gallery's Scully Room. This, like Tate Modern's Rothko Room, is one of my favourite and most visited art spaces, and I was delighted to be asked to respond musically to these fantastic paintings.
Indeed, my work is a series of responses rather than a set of interpretations or even "translations" into music. I looked at various aspects of each painting to feed my responses, including form, warmth/coolness, repetition, drama, and of course colour. 
"Yellow Yellow" put me in mind of a "hot evening on the southern Mediterranean coast", not least because I knew the painter had spent some time in Morocco in 1969 and, like Paul Klee before him, had been very taken by the light there. Alex Petcu has a bespoke set of wooden bars, the warmth of which I really enjoyed hearing, and so I wrote the movement for those, and at one point the rhythms of a Moroccan folk dance are hinted at.
One of the central conceits of these first performances is that the percussionist - Alex Petcu, with whom I have collaborated many times now - has a different instrumental set-up for each movement. The different set-ups are placed near the relevant paintings so that the musical journey, inspired by the six paintings in order, is reflected in Alex's physical journey around the room. The audience participates in this unusual voyage, experiencing a conversation between the two art forms for the period in which the paintings and the music occupy the same time and space.

"Scully" was commissioned by the Sundays at Noon concert series with funds from the Hugh Lane Gallery and the Arts Council of Ireland.

"Yellow Yellow", movement IV from "Scully" for solo percussion

"Scully" is a 6-movement, 25-minute work for solo percussion where each movement responds to one of the six paintings in the Hugh Lane Gallery's Scully Room. This, like Tate Modern's Rothko Room, is one of my favourite and most visited art spaces, and I was delighted to be asked to respond musically to these fantastic paintings.
Indeed, my work is a series of responses rather than a set of interpretations or even "translations" into music. I looked at various aspects of each painting to feed my responses, including form, warmth/coolness, repetition, drama, and of course colour. 
"Arrest" looked to me "ominous, with great intensity" and so this is the most dramatic movement of the musical piece, using (only) a big tam-tam (gong) and bass drum, but with a variety of performing techniques.
One of the central conceits of these first performances is that the percussionist - Alex Petcu, with whom I have collaborated many times now - has a different instrumental set-up for each movement. The different set-ups are placed near the relevant paintings so that the musical journey, inspired by the six paintings in order, is reflected in Alex's physical journey around the room. The audience participates in this unusual voyage, experiencing a conversation between the two art forms for the period in which the paintings and the music occupy the same time and space.

"Scully" was commissioned by the Sundays at Noon concert series with funds from the Hugh Lane Gallery and the Arts Council of Ireland.

"Arrest", movement VI from "Scully" for solo percussion

"Leide Beag" (2020) is a four-movement work inspired by the celebrated Irish language texts of the Aistriú collection, housed in NUI Galway. The work explores migration from different points of view in texts either originally in Irish or translated into that language. The work was commissioned by Galway 2020 for Tonnta vocal group, led by Robbie Blake. "Cuireadh do Mhuire" is the last movement, a setting of a poem by Máirtín Ó Direáin.
The singers are directed on this premiere recording by Sinead Hayes.

"Invitation to Mary" (translated from Irish into English by Peter Sirr
Where will you find this year, Mary,
shelter for your holy child?
Every door is shut against him
by human pride and human hatred.

Let me, if you'll allow, invite you instead
to a distant island in the western sea.
Candles will shine a welcome in every window
and a turf fire blaze in every hearth.

(Christmas 1942)

'Cuireadh do Mhuire' from Leide Beag (vocal sextet)

"The music of stones" (2024) was inspired by British land artist Richard Long’s 2004 work of the same name. This was an indoor installation comprising a semicircle of jagged blue rocks on the floor overlooked by a vertical rectangular monolithic wooden construction; above this was a series of simple stained glass windows. The whole spoke to me of a journey from chaos to serenity, the jaggedness of human existence overlooked by the implacability of fate while the hope of peace floats above, only attainable once we lift our gaze from our own concerns. The music follows this journey. 
"The music of stones" was commissioned by the Boyne Music Festival and the performers on this recording are Vourneen Ryan (fl), Deirdre Brenner (pno), Aisling Manning (vn), Robin Panter (va) and Julie-Anne Manning (vc).

The Music of Stones (flute & piano quartet)

"Terra" is the 1st movement from "I Quattro Elementi" (2020). This is a work for solo violin in which each movement is played on only one of the four strings – G, A, E and D in turn; therefore the qualities of the individual strings are very much to the fore. The mythical four elements – earth, water, fire, and air – inspired the work conceptually and helped shape the movements’ characters.
"I Quattro Elementi" was written for Dušica Mladenović with funds from a Cork City Council Arts Project award.

Terra (solo violin)

“we have no prairies” (2024) for contrabass flute, contra-alto clarinet and soundtrack is one of the principal outcomes of the “Restoring Cavan’s Boglands”  project, funded by Creative Ireland's "Creative Climate Action fund II".  My role was to compose a piece of music that would somehow reflect the nature and aims of the project, and so I began by making a number of field recordings in different types of bogland, both drained and restored, so I could hear the characters of both and compare them. Water, birdsong and insect life were all important sonic elements, and the times of year I made the various recordings were also a factor. I then produced a soundtrack comprised of edited and processed field recordings which became the basis for the new work, then composed music for two wonderfully low wind instruments: Lina Andonovska’s contrabass flute and Cathal Roche’s contra-alto clarinet; Lina and Cathal are both wonderful musicians I have worked with often.
“we have no prairies” (also the first line of Seamus Heaney’s beautiful poem “Bogland”) combines substantial sections of composed music with occasional improvised passages and interlude-type soundtrack-only passages; its trajectory follows a “back-to-life”-type narrative, sonically speaking.

TRACK LIST:
0'00"-1'08"     Introduction
1'08"-8'05"     Birds 1
8'05"-9'06"     Interlude 1
9'06"-13'24"     Big Water
13'24"-14'43"     Interlude 2
14'43"-21'43"     Little Water
21'43"-22'45"     Interlude 3
22'45"-26'34"     Moss
26'34"-27'32"     Interlude 4
27'32"-32'00"     Birds 2

we have no prairies (contrabass flute, contra-alto clarinet & soundtrack)

"Under the lark full cloud" (1999) is a setting of Dylan Thomas' "Poem in October". It was commissioned by Chamber Choir Ireland, the performers on this recording.

'Poem In October'
It was my thirtieth year to heaven
Woke to my hearing from harbour and neighbour wood
   And the mussel pooled and the heron
           Priested shore
       The morning beckon
With water praying and call of seagull and rook
And the knock of sailing boats on the net webbed wall
       Myself to set foot
           That second
In the still sleeping town and set forth.

   My birthday began with the water-
Birds and the birds of the winged trees flying my name
   Above the farms and the white horses
           And I rose
       In rainy autumn
And walked abroad in a shower of all my days.
High tide and the heron dived when I took the road
       Over the border
           And the gates
Of the town closed as the town awoke.

   A springful of larks in a rolling
Cloud and the roadside bushes brimming with whistling
   Blackbirds and the sun of October
           Summery
       On the hill's shoulder,
Here were fond climates and sweet singers suddenly
Come in the morning where I wandered and listened
       To the rain wringing
           Wind blow cold
In the wood faraway under me.

   Pale rain over the dwindling harbour
And over the sea wet church the size of a snail
   With its horns through mist and the castle
           Brown as owls
       But all the gardens
Of spring and summer were blooming in the tall tales
Beyond the border and under the lark full cloud.
       There could I marvel
           My birthday
Away but the weather turned around.

   It turned away from the blithe country
And down the other air and the blue altered sky
   Streamed again a wonder of summer
           With apples
       Pears and red currants
And I saw in the turning so clearly a child's
Forgotten mornings when he walked with his mother
       Through the parables
           Of sun light
And the legends of the green chapels

   And the twice told fields of infancy
That his tears burned my cheeks and his heart moved in mine.
   These were the woods the river and sea
           Where a boy
       In the listening
Summertime of the dead whispered the truth of his joy
To the trees and the stones and the fish in the tide.
       And the mystery
           Sang alive
Still in the water and singingbirds.

   And there could I marvel my birthday
Away but the weather turned around. And the true
   Joy of the long dead child sang burning
           In the sun.
       It was my thirtieth
Year to heaven stood there then in the summer noon
Though the town below lay leaved with October blood.
       O may my heart's truth
           Still be sung
On this high hill in a year's turning.

Under the lark full cloud (SATB choir)

A setting of "Limbo" by Seamus Heaney, commissioned by the City of Derry Youth Choir (1999).

'Limbo'
Fishermen at Ballyshannon
Netted an infant last night
Along with the salmon.
An illegitimate spawning,

A small one thrown back
To the waters.  But I'm sure
As she stood in the shallows
Ducking him tenderly

Till the frozen knobs of her wrists
Were dead as the gravel,
He was a minnow with hooks
tearing her open.

She waded in under
the sign of the cross.
He was hauled in with the fish.
Now limbo will be

A cold gutter of souls
Through some far briny zone.
Even Christ's palms, unhealed,
Smart and cannot fish there.

Limbo (SATB choir)

Little red fish (choir & saxophone quartet)

'Therefore I am…' (2012)
This is the only purely instrumental work of my three Tallaght Hospital (Dublin) projects. I spent time observing and interacting with dementia patients and this six-movement work resulted, each one reflecting a different aspect of dealing with dementia.
'The Appointment' tries to capture the tension and anxiety of seeing a doctor when dementia is the issue, and the 2nd movement, 'Face, velvet, red (memory test)', reflects the difficulties of repeating things exactly when suffering from dementia, especially during doctors’ infamous memory tests. Utermohlen was a very good artist who developed dementia – his work, like the third movement ('Utermohlen Variations'), shows his gradual decline. 'Frontotemporal' is one part of the brain affected by dementia, and which can cause obsessive behaviour (hence the repeated tune). 'Slow & sweet (& soft' was how a daughter reminded her father to treat her mother, the latter having developed dementia at a young age, and so it’s a tender piece. The final movement takes the jazz standard 'Autumn leaves' and uses it to reflect the gradual disintegration of a dementia sufferer’s personality as it dissembles through time – although sometimes the sufferer can carry on in their own world quite contentedly, as the saxophonist does here.

The performers are Cathal Roche, saxophone; Ken Rice, violin; Joachim Roewer, viola; and Malachy Robinson, double bass.

'Therefore I am...' 1: 'The Appointment'

'Pulsar' (2012) was inspired by the astronomical phenomenon of the same name, a rapidly rotating neutron star that emits regular pulses of radio waves and other electromagnetic radiation at rates ranging from once every few seconds up to 1000 pulses per second. Over their very long lifespans, pulsars eventually slow down and once a certain point has been reached the pulse-system seems to switch off.
Inspired by this simple idea of regular pulses gradually slowing down, I wrote 'Pulsar' for saxophone quartet and organ, a 12-minute work in eight sections which play without a break. As the work progresses the tempo gradually slows while the number of beats per bar increases, creating a sense of accumulating friction. Beyond that, there is a certain sense of otherworldliness created by the unusual (but not unknown) combination of saxophone quartet and organ, which is nicely in keeping with the source of the work’s origin.

'Pulsar' was commissioned by the Orgelpark, Amsterdam, and premiered by Pieter van Dijk and the Amstel Quartet in February 2013.


Pulsar (organ & saxophone quartet)

'Seascape with high cliffs' (2006) was inspired by a visit I made some years ago to the Cliffs of Moher on the west coast of Ireland. The cliffs are hundreds of feet above the swelling sea, with the Aran islands in the distance, barely visible the day I was there. Seabirds were floating in the strong breeze below me.

This work was commissioned to be the test piece for the 2006 European Brass Band Contest, held that year in Belfast, Northern Ireland. The recording is of the performance by the winning band, the Brass Band Willebroek.

Seascape with high cliffs (brass band)

'Heaven lay close I' is a work in four sections, each based on a traditional tabla rhythmic cycle. Each section also has a melodic content which, although original, seeks to evoke the spirit of the kind of music one normally associates with the tabla but now in a more Western, 'classical' context due to the presence of the quartet. The marriage of these two traditions results in a new, or neutral territory, where each tradition has been able to influence the musical outcome to a roughly equal degree.

The work was written with funds from an Arts Council of Ireland Artist Bursary. The performance here is by the Amstel Quartet and Niti Ranjan Biswas.


Heaven Lay Close I (saxophone quartet)

'Bewitched' (2010) is the result of a 10-week period during autumn 2010 when I was Composer-in-Residence to the Stroke Unit of the Adelaide and Meath Hospital in Tallaght, Dublin. My task was to create a substantial work of music which in some way reflects the experience of both suffering and treating stroke, and to that end I was given every support by consultants and staff and allowed significant access to patients and healthcare workers while I was there. The work is a song cycle where the texts are actually segments of conversations I had with patients and healthcare workers, treated as song lyrics.

Part of the residency involved Irish soprano Deirdre Moynihan and members of the Irish Chamber Orchestra coming in to the Unit’s day hospital once a fortnight to give a lunchtime concert of light and popular music. During these visits the musicians also played the latest part of the piece I was writing in order to stimulate interest in the residency’s progress. The very first session brought home to me the fact that the initial audience for my new work would be made up almost exclusively of patients who were not necessarily regular concert-goers and therefore I needed to be able to write in such a way as to connect with whatever musical experience they had. An early visit to a group physiotherapy session provided the key - the session was light and enjoyable for the patients and in the background played a CD of music from the 1950s by artists such as the Rat Pack and Doris Day. I decided that each song I wrote would segue into a Doris Day song, thus not only providing a link to the audience’s own formative musical experiences but also giving me the opportunity to use existing music to comment on my own music; in the end these commentaries are by turns touching, moving and even humorous, but the necessity to communicate with a specific group of people led me to devise a format I would not have otherwise conceived, and it worked even better than I could have hoped.

The performers on this recording are soprano Deirdre Moynihan and members of the Irish Chamber Orchestra.

Bewitched (soprano & string quartet)

'Quattro Stagioni' (2016) is a 21st-century response to the idea behind Vivaldi's 'Four Seasons', as seen through the lens of American artist Cy Twombly's major work from the 1990s, 'Quattro Stagioni'. My 'Quattro Stagioni' consists of four concerto-type movements: each of the four violinists has their own focal movement, where the other three act as the 'ripieno' group. The character of each movement is inspired by one of Twombly's 'Quattro Stagioni' paintings. This work is a meditation on the cyclical nature of life and as such is full of colour, texture and emotion.

The work was commissioned by Music Network and the performers on this recording are Mia Cooper, Katherine Hunka, Ioana Petcu-Colan and Helena Wood.

Quattro Stagioni (violin quartet)

'Achinet' (2017) was written with the talents of clarinettist Cristo Barrios and bass clarinettist Sarah Watts firmly in mind. This chamber double concerto takes inspiration from Barrios' home island of Tenerife, particularly the mythology surrounding its historical inhabitants the Guanches (who named the island Achinet) and the legend that they were descended from the people of the sunken city of Atlantis - the music begins in the lowest depths and, eventually, sinks back down there.
Another important inspiration is the whistling language 'silbo', found on Tenerife's neighbouring island La Gomera -- silbo is used to communicate over distances by farmers and shepherds (the section between 8'53" and 11'55" is partly based on transcriptions of actual silbo phrases, even requiring some of the players to double on 'Swanee' whistles to more closely imitate the sound of whistling).
A final element which the music references is a thematic connection with American artist Robert Motherwell's painting 'Beside the Sea no.22' -- its brilliant blue and energetic gestures find a mirror in the colours, textures and contours of the music both the soloists and the ensemble play.

'Achinet' was commissioned by Crescent Arts Centre, Belfast with funds from the Arts Council of Northern Ireland Lottery Unit. The work is dedicated to the Crescent’s director Keith Acheson and to Greg Caffrey, the director of the Hard Rain Soloist Ensemble which premiered the work.

Achinet (chamber double clarinet concerto)

This solo for alto saxophone (1995) was inspired by the following verse from the book of John, chapter 15:

'"Woman", he said, "Why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for?"
Thinking he was the gardener, she said, "Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him and I will get him."

This work was written for Northern Irish saxophonist Gerard McChrystal, and was recorded for his Silva Screen album 'Meeting Point'.

I Sleep at Waking (alto saxophone solo)

This work was written in 2017 at the request of the Ortús Festival for Irish flautist Fiona Kelly, who is the soloist on this recording along with violinists Yoan Brakha and Brendan Garde and cellists Aoife Nic Athlaoich and Sinéad O'Halloran. Inspired by the present rise in demagoguery in various places, the soloist’s lines demand a performance of thrilling yet hollow virtuosity.

Art, Beauty, Carbon-Dating, Climate Change, Contraception, Education, Empathy, Entry, Ethnic Cleansing, Evidence, Evolution, Facts, Freedom, Future, Gender Equality, Genocide, Geology, Healthcare, History, Holocaust, Honesty, Hope, Integrity, Justice, Love, Marriage, Mental Health, Opportunity, Past, Privilege, Racism, Reality, Reproductive Rights, Responsibility, Science, Sexuality, Slavery, Truth, Voice, Workplace Equality

dɪˈnʌɪə
noun
1.	A person who denies something, especially someone who refuses to admit the truth of a concept or proposition that is supported by the majority of scientific or historical evidence.
2.	A person who by their words and/or actions, denies something to another person.

Denier (for flute, 2 violins & 2 cellos)

About "Socrates ungraved" (2016).
I was commissioned to make a transcription/arrangement of Erik Satie’s 'Socrate' by Theater-Heilbronn in 2013 for a new stage work involving the Württembergisches Kammerorchester Heilbronn (WKO). This was a work I was not familiar with at the time but having since got to know it very well, I now believe it to be one of Satie’s finest creations. He subtitled the work a Symphonic Drama but this is typically ironic as the work is neither symphonic nor dramatic. Indeed, Satie said that he wanted the work to be “white” (meaning transparent, lucid and unimpassioned), adding that he had eaten nothing but “white” foods in the period leading up to its composition.
Satie’s 'Socrate' sets texts by Plato (in French translation) about the life and death of Socrates; the version I made for soprano and string orchestra based on the original voice and piano score keeps to Satie’s notion of ‘whiteness’ with subtle changes to the texture here and there in the strings to support the flow of the music through little contrasts. I realized when listening to my WKO version that I was paying little attention to what the soprano was singing (in French), and was instead starting to think about how well the music would sound with a violin taking the principal line. Thus my idea of a Satie-an anti-concerto was born, with the violin line being modelled on the original vocal line. Octave transpositions and occasional embellishments are applied in order to keep the melody idiomatic, proactive and, importantly, of constant interest to both performer and listener. I also gave a new character to the solo line through the addition of many grace notes.

I entitled this new version of the work 'Socrates ungraved' (2016) – “ungraved” is an old English word for disinterred or “dug up”, relating to my feeling that this creation is a way of giving new life to an old work. I was delighted that my good friend and long-time collaborator Dušica Mladenović agreed to work with me on this ‘anti-concerto’ and she gave the première of the work in January 2018 with the Belgrade Philharmonic Orchestra and Aleksandar Kojić conducting.

Socrates Ungraved (concerto for violin & strings) by Erik Satie/Ian Wilson

"How goes the night?" (2018). I have recently begun to explore in my music pressing societal issues as varied as our fragile ecosystem (in “Thresholds” for soundtrack and saxophonist) and the rise of demagoguery (in “Denier” for flute and strings). Given the present state of political institutions in many parts of the world, I wanted to explore in this work, a commission from New York's Glass Farm Ensemble, ideas around pushing back and speaking out, and chose to set three poems by living American writers from the recent “Resist Much Obey Little” collection (Dispatches Editions, 2017). These poems, by Janet Hamill ("A Thousand Years"), Mark Lamoureux ("FOREWARD: THIS MACHINE KILLS FASCISTS"), and Mercedes Lawry ("November 9, 2016") are explicit in their desire to preserve personal and artistic freedom in the face of encroaching curtailments without naming names as to the causes, and therefore have an inherent universality of application in terms of geography. I recently wrote that, to my mind, "one of the purposes of art is to provoke" - "How goes the night?" is provocative in the sense that it seeks to encourage audiences to experience the idea of 'resistance' from the three poets' points of view.

“How goes the night?” was commissioned by Glass Farm Ensemble with funds from the Arts Council of Ireland.

How Goes The Night? (soprano & small ensemble)

'want & longing' (Nippi/Psychonavigation Records, 2010) is the debut album by Common Tongue, a unique trio bringing together sean-nós singer Lorcán Mac Mathúna, improvising saxophonist Cathal Roche and Ian Wilson on live electronics. With performances based around new melodies put to traditional songs, the trio interprets Irish standards through a 21st-century prism, drawing on aspects of Jazz and Electronica to help re-contextualize the sean-nós singing which is very much at the core of their music making. All the melodies are original compositions by Wilson to old Irish song texts.
The 8 tracks are:
  1. The Mountain Streams
  2. An Scailpín Draighneach I
  3. Dog and Gun I
  4. Craigie Hill
  5. Slán le Máigh
  6. Dog and Gun II
  7. An Scailpín Draighneach II
  8. Contae Maigheo

'want & longing' by Common Tongue

"Dedicated to so-called leaders and people in power everywhere who pander to their own desires, dogmas, pockets, narrow support bases, and/or stockholders instead of serving the greater good.  
You will be the end of us all."

"The emptiness..." (2018) was commissioned and premiered by the Hard Rain SoloistEnsemble of Belfast, the performers on this recording, and reflects the actual emptiness of certain political promises and desires in music of meagre melodic and harmonic means. The instrumentation is alto flute, bass clarinet, piano, violin and cello, with additional music boxes for all plus e-bow and percussion beaters for the pianist, an analogue radio, and resonators.

The emptiness of the ever-expanding universe cannot compare to the void where your heart should be

"Apparitions II" (2005/19)is an instrumental version of a work originally commissioned by Sligo County Council (Ireland) under the Per Cent for Art scheme, 'Pieces of Elsewhere' (2005), a series of settings for soprano and percussion quartet of 17 Japanese haiku in English translation by Sam Hamill. I subsequently made an instrumental version for viola (or alto flute, or any other similarly-ranged instrument) and percussion quartet, and more recently reworked that for just one percussionist and viola. The performers on this recording are violist Nathan Sherman and percussionist Alex Petcu.

Apparitions II (for viola and percussion)

Composed in 2011 in response to a commission by Margaret and Michael Flanagan to write a short piece for the wedding of their daughter Orla, who conducts the Mornington Singers in Dublin, the choir which premiered the piece. My setting of e.e. cummings' “i carry your heart” (from '95 Poems', 1958) is quite opulent in terms of its harmony and lets the text lead the way in terms of structure and flow.
Performed by the NDR Choir, Germany, conducted by Philipp Ahmann, from the album "nine (birds) here" (Es-Dur label, ES2081)

i carry your heart with me (i carry it in
my heart) i am never without it (anywhere
i go you go, my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing, my darling)
                                                      i fear
no fate (for you are my fate, my sweet) i want
no world (for beautiful you are my world, my true)
and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)

Unbekanntes Album (28.11.2019 09:43:42)

i carry your heart

0'00" - "nine(birds)here" for SATB choir
3'20" - "i carry your heart" for SATB choir
8'55" - "Little red fish" for 8-part mixed choir & saxophone quartet

NDR Choir cond. Philipp Ahmann, Raschèr Saxophone Quartet

“nine(birds)here” [1990] was my first composition for choir, two brief settings of poems by the iconoclastic American poet E.E. Cummings, whose use of imaginative text layouts and punctuative interruptions of words and phrases, as well as his fresh approach to language itself, I found inspiring for their freedom and, by extension, their permission to be free in response. The music takes its cue from the texts in terms of mood and gesture and while the two poems – “birds(                                                                                                                              
            here,invent” [No Thanks, 1935] & “nine birds(rising” [95 Poems, 1958] – were written over 20 years apart, they seemed like a good pairing to me and make an effective linked contrast with their respective focuses on stasis and movement.
     
     I returned to Cummings’ poetry again in 2011 when I was commissioned by Margaret and Michael Flanagan to write a short piece for the wedding of their son Arthur and daughter-in-law Orla, who conducts the Mornington Singers in Dublin, the choir which premiered the piece. My setting of “i carry your heart” (95 Poems, 1958) is more opulent in terms of its harmony than the first work and again lets the text lead the way.
     
     In contrast to these short a cappella pieces, which are both essentially 4-part settings with occasional divisions, “Little red fish” [2006] is a more complex and substantial work. The choir is here divided into eight parts and the inclusion of a saxophone quartet as an integral element opened up a whole new world of possibilities, particularly in terms of colour and timbre. This project came about through the efforts of the Rascher Saxophone Quartet, who at that time had already inspired a number of composers to write works for this combination. “Little red fish” is a setting of the opening lines from Oskar Kokoschka’s book of illustrated poems “Die träumenden Knaben” (the dreaming boys, 1908/1917) – ostensibly a children’s book but one marked by violence, death, and a loss of innocence. All these elements ended up in the musical setting, which often deconstructs the text into its constituent elements but holds fast to the dark atmosphere. I had already written a number of works for saxophone quartet at that time and so was excited to explore the combination further in this new musical context. “Little red fish” was commissioned by the National Chamber Choir of Ireland (now Chamber Choir Ireland) with funds from the Arts Council of Ireland, and was premiered by NCC and the Rascher Quartet under Celso Antunes.

nine(birds)here ALBUM

A recording of a concert given by the Ulster Orchestra at the Belfast Festival at Queen's in 2012, conducted by Ian Wilson. The programme consisted of Lutosławski's "Musique Funèbre", Stravinsky's "Pulcinella Suite" and the world premiere of Ian Wilson's fantasy for piano, orchestra, and flute band "Flags and Emblems", with soloist Matthew Schellhorn.
The concert was recorded and broadcast on BBC Radio 3.
00'00" -     "Musique Funèbre"
14'52" -       "Pulcinella Suite"
39'00" -      "Flags and Emblems"

Ulster Orchestra/Wilson/Schellhorn @ Belfast Festival 2012

VISIT MY NEW BANDCAMP PAGE: https://ianwilson2.bandcamp.com/

Ian Wilson (Belfast, 1964) has composed over 200 works in many different genres which have been performed and broadcast on six continents. He is a member of Aosdána, Ireland’s national association of creative artists, and his music is published by G. Ricordi & Co. Ltd and Universal Edition. 
Visit: www.ianwilson.ie

Ian Wilson, composer

Pinned to spotlight

Popular tracks