‘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)

My 15th quartet, inspired by the floods that hit Cork city in early 2014, performed by the Vanbrugh Quartet. The piece casts a cold eye on the life cycle of a flood and attempts to recreate it in music through shifting textures, densities and tessituras. The four sections in the work are Fall, Rise, Breach and Disperse. Alluvio is Latin for "the act of flooding".

Alluvio (string quartet #15)

My "Sonata for Solo Violin" (2014) is a work in three movements, titled Reeyill, Aire and Jigg, each inspired by a traditional Irish music form (reel, air, jig). The whole lasts around 15 minutes and the movements are fast, slow and fast again, with the triple metre of the final movement balancing the more duple feel of the opening. There is no ‘story’ behind the work, it is rather an exploration of how old forms can be somewhat deconstructed yet still retain something of their character.
The work's central Aire is based on an original melody of my own, written in the style of an old Irish air, the kind of thing Irish sean-nós singers might sing.

"Sonata for Solo Violin" was written for, and is dedicated to Alina Ibragimova.

Sonata for solo violin

As the quiet crow flies

Quiet Club + CrOw - As the quiet crow flies (excpt)

'Creating Evil, Face It!' is Matthew Jacobson's anagram for 'leaving certificate'Please enjoy this live excerpt of Matthew's 'Create Evil, let's Face it.'with me and F-JOB, (Cormac O Brien on bass and Greg Felton on piano).

solo on Matthew J's 'Creating Evil, Face It!' by FJOB+ Cathal Roche live @arthurs '16

'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)

Oort Cloud, for tenor saxophone and percussion

Performed by:
Srdjan Paunovic - tenor saxophone
Darko Karlecik - percussion

Live recordings, Novi Sad 29/10/2017

Oort Cloud (2016)

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

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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

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

Ian Wilson, composer

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