POETRY OF 1916 LEADERS INSPIRE NEW IAN WILSON COMPOSITION 'WAYFARERS'

Wayfarers is a new composition by composer Ian Wilson based on poems penned by leaders of the 1916 Easter Rising taking place at Triskel Christchurch 7.30pm Friday 30 September. The event is a large-scale work for mixed choir and string quartet featuring Chamber Choir Ireland and the The Vanbrugh Quartet as well as vocal soloists: Abbi Temple, soprano and Jeffrey Ledwidge, baritone. The work was written as a response to the 1916 Easter Rising yet composer Ian Wilson says, “It does not focus on the political but rather the human element of the rebellion, examining through musical settings of poems, letters and texts by rebel leaders and their contemporaries Joseph Campbell and Eva Gore-Booth the personal impulses behind, and the costs of involvement in the uprising.” Poems by Pádraic Pearse and Joseph Plunkett tease out both the joys and burdens of their commitment to establishing a sovereign nation, while Joseph Campbell and Eva Gore-Booth, at a little more distance, describe for us the mood of the times both before and after the Rising. Wilson says “Five poem settings for full choir are interspersed with settings for soloists and string quartet of extracts from letters by Plunkett to his fiancée and from Pearse to his mother as well as portions of Pearse’s court-martial speech and Roger Casement’s last words. “The effect of the whole is to paint a picture of what it can be like to commit to a struggle, to give an idea of the effects of that commitment on self and loved ones, and to understand some of the similarities between ourselves and those involved in rebellion.” Wayfarers was commissioned by the National Concert Hall, Dublin and Triskel Christchurch, Cork with funding assistance from the Arts Council of Ireland, to mark the centenary of the 1916 Rising.