Beside the Sea (Belgrade, 2023)

Concept & music Ian Wilson
Soundtrack element in collaboration with Steve McCourt
Violinist Dušica Mladenović
Director Olivia Songer
Design Jack Scullion
Funded by the Arts Council of Ireland
“Beside the Sea” is an ambitious and innovative work of music theatre by composer Ian Wilson for violinist, soundtrack and found objects that explores ideas around memory, personhood and how to evoke a life and its trajectory through music. Wilson had wanted to make this piece since his father died in 2018 after a long battle with Alzheimer’s; the goal is a work of art which examines how much of a role memory has in making a person and what part music can also have in that. Featuring violinist Dušica Mladenović, director Olivia Songer and designer Jack Scullion, 'Beside the sea' is a universal and uplifting story of changing minds and bodies, of ageing, using elements of Wilson's father’s life as found objects - especially the sounds of the sea which he loved, of the choir he sang in for 40 years, and of his wife, the Northern Irish soprano Norma Gray Wilson - around which the narrative has been built. The work’s title is multi-faceted and ambivalent, referencing musical, physical, temporal, and cognitive domains. It also refers to Robert Motherwell’s iconic series of paintings, some of which inspired the violin gestures towards the end of the work."
This is a video of the first performance in Continental Europe, with soloist Dušica Mladenović and a new specially-made video edited by Adam Wilson.