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ERRATA:
"Swimming With Dolphins: SSAA score

Page 1, measure 5: Soprano 1 divisi, upper part second note should be an F sharp. Also page 2, measure 7, second note should be an F sharp.

Updated August 22, 2018

Choral - secular >>>

Swimming With Dolphins

About "Swimming With Dolphins"

For many years, I fantasized about swimming freely with dolphins in warm tropical waters. I wanted to swim with them in their own playground, not in the confines of a pool or a dolphin exhibit. Finally with a dolphin-swim date scheduled off the coast of New South Wales, Australia, I set about describing musically my yet-to-be-experienced encounter with dolphins. Alas, due to bad weather, the boat trip was cancelled.

So I waited patiently for my next vacation to Australia to visit my family, and once again I signed up for the dolphin-swim, having already composed this music the previous year. Once again, the weather disappointed. Despite making the trip, very few dolphins were present due to a bad storm several days previously. Nevertheless, I got in the water alongside a boat and held onto a rope-tow beneath the boat's hull. Apparently there were dolphins all around me, but I couldn't really see them, due to being half-drowned by the chop and the boat's wake, and filled with fear.  We were twelve miles off shore and I'm terrified of sharks.

Some years later, I met the captive dolphins on the Big Island of Hawaii. I got to see them up close, but this wasn't my vision of swimming with dolphins either. I wanted to see them being free!

Finally I experienced my dream vicariously at a place called Two Step near Captain Cook on Hawaii's Big Island. After a long snorkeling swim, we were toweling ourselves dry when close by in the water, a man began to splash and shriek ecstatically.  He was surrounded by about 30 spinner dolphins reveling in the water, spinning, arcing, twirling and clearly delighted in playing with him.  I considered swimming back out to join the man, but instead just watched as the man was "caressed by the creatures of bubbles and mirth." Later he emerged from the water, bubbling with euphoria, gushing in excited spurts and vividly describing the scenes in my music.

I did finally experience a close, personal encounter with the Hawaiian spinner dolphins some years later off the coast of Kona. As I hung suspended in the water, they swam all around me and it was absolutely thrilling. This experience wasn't like my music describes, however -- the dolphins were calmly circling the bay and were so close to me I could have touched them, and this time I too was calm, and overwhelmed by a deep peace and a sense of connection with these magnificent creatures that I'd waited such a long time to meet.

SS-201702-SWD-SSAA
For SATB and piano
Lyrics and Music by Bronwyn Edwards

Level of difficulty: Medium to advanced

Recorded parts are available in MP3 format for S1, S2, A1 and A2. Please email Bron at sirensongbron@gmail.com to request parts.

Performed by:

Originally performed A CAPPELLA by Bronwyn Edwards on her "She Loves the Rain" Singer-Songwriter CD
(SSAA Choral version is new.)

Lyrics

by Bronwyn Edwards

Whose heart beats in my ears?
Thrilled beyond my senses am I!
Splashing in waves in the water so near,
Out in the ocean as dolphins swim by.

Blue world of a dolphin's playground,
Turquoise dims to ultramarine,
Waves of sunlight dance all around
Here we are frolicking out in sea and swimming with dolphins.

I am thrilled to be part of this!
Mask and fins and a state of bliss, and swimming with dolphins.
(Swimming with dolphins with joy and with bliss.)

Senses on overload, all of the dolphins are laughing at me,
Etching the mem'ry of being so close,
Here with the dolphins that swim in the sea.

No fences in this world, no gravity, quicker than lightning,
Arc and swirl, leap and twirl,
Nothing on Earth can be as exciting as swimming with dolphins.

I am thrilled to be part of this!
Mask and fins and a state of bliss, swimming with dolphins.
(Swimming with dolphins with joy and with bliss.)

As I stand on the Earth, I think of the dolphins and know I have been
Caressed by the creatures of bubbles and mirth,
Swimming with dolphins that live in the sea.
Swimming with dolphins that live in the sea.

Available at www.jwpepper.com as printed copies or digital download.

View partial score (pages 1-4) in PDF format

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