European American Music Distributors Company is a member of the Schott Music Group

Ian Wilson's Sullen Earth Released on Riverrun Records

Apr. 30, 2008

This month, Riverrun Records releases Sullen Earth, a collection of four string orchestra works by the young Irish composer Ian Wilson. The recording includes his Limena, an homage to the victims of the World Trade Center attacks; The Capsizing Man andOther Stories, a five-movement work drawing inspiration from the sculpture of Alberto Giacometti; and In fretta, in vento, which takes its title from Shakespeare's Sonnet 29 and utilizes a simple, medieval-style melody. The title work, Sullen Earth, most directly represents Wilson's later style, as designated by the musicologist Tim Rutherford-Johnson, in which the composer "moved away from a polyphonic-melodic style to present regions of one music or another, letting them speak for themselves." In this work, Wilson has said that he seeks to "enliven the notes with a certain emotional resonance."

Described by Gramophone Magazine as "a composer of imaginative resource and a sure formal sense who has the gift of making even the barest ideas interesting," Wilson's works have been performed all over the world by artists such as the National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland, the Belgrade Philharmonic, the Norwegian Radio Orchestra, the London Mozart Players, the Irish Chamber Orchestra, the Artis, Vogler and Vanbrugh Quartets as well as Lontano and Avanti! ensembles. In 1992 Ian Wilson was awarded the Macaulay Fellowship administered by the Arts Council of Ireland, and in 1998 he was elected to Aosdána, Ireland's State-sponsored body of creative artists. From 2000 to 2003 Ian Wilson was AHRB Research Fellow in Creative and Performing Arts at the University of Ulster. Since 2002 he has been director of the Sligo New Music Festival, and has held the position of Composer-in-Association since 2006 with California's Camerata Pacifica Ensemble.

This year England's Brighton Festival features the music of Ian Wilson with performances of his string quartet Veer by the Cappa Quartet on May 16; The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World for ensemble on May 19, a work described by the Irish Times as "watery and pictorial, mysterious and abstract, capturing the macabre and beautiful"; and the UK premiere of his work for two guitars Cast, by Slava and Leonard Grigoryan on May 19.

For more information on the music of Ian Wilson, please visit www.universaledition.com and www.ianwilson.org.uk.

Ian Wilson
Limena (1998)
for piano and string orchestra
17'

The Capsizing Man and Other Stories (1994/1997)
for string orchestra
22'

In fretta, in vento (2001/2004)
for string orchestra
15'

Ian Wilson photo © Richard Kalina

News