"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)

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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

How Goes The Night? (soprano & small ensemble)

Ian Wilson, composer