Leide beag by Ian Wilson

ALL PROCEEDS GO TO MASI (the Movement of Asylum Seekers in Ireland)

The four movements of "Leide beag" (“a small clue”) are all connected by the theme of migration, with each exploring a different facet of that theme. Louis de Paor's “Fáilte Uí Donnchú” (“O’Donoghue’s Welcome”) musically evokes the busy-ness of Galway’s streets but quickly introduces a sense of foreign-ness or un-belonging in the harmonies, which undermine the outwardly upbeat music.

Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill’s poem “Leide beag” uses the myth of mermaids to evoke the literal fish-out-of-water feeling that arriving in and trying to fit into a foreign culture can evoke. The music responds to this idea by being itself very dislocated from the text – words and syllables are stretched to breaking point and harmonies are close and claustrophobic.

Alan Titley’s “Gluaiseacht” (“On the move”) contrasts static, repetitive passages with more mobile, forward-moving music, reflecting the narrator’s experiences with (tense) stasis in his original and new homelands with the fraught motion of the journey between.

Finally, Máirtín Ó Direáin’s “Cuireadh do Mhuire” (“Invitation to Mary”) is a gentle, lullaby-like movement reflecting the simplicity and openness of the poem’s sentiments.

Leide Beag was written for the wonderful Irish vocal group Tonnta and was commissioned by Galway 2020 European Capital of Culture as part of the Aistriú project in partnership with NUI Galway. The music is part of a larger collaborative film-performance comprising voice, movement and image inspired by the celebrated Irish language texts of the Aistriú collection.

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.

ianwilson.ie