Ocean Breeze
Ian Evans Guthrie (b. 1992)
dedicated with gratitude to Brian Stuck and the Belton Singers
Ocean
Breeze (2025) for SATB choir and piano
© 2025 by Ian Evans Guthrie (ASCAP)
PERFORMANCE NOTES
Instrumentation
Effects—These are the vocalization of the IPA [x], approximately equivalent to the “ch” in “loch.” It should sound like soft ocean waves. This can be created with an ensemble of 2-3 singers (or more, if desired).
Piano three-hands—With the one-part PRIMO being desirable, but not essential, the accompaniment consists of two players if the full part is to be realized. While the SECONDO provides the necessary harmonic and other accompaniment, the PRIMO creates all the aleatoric sound effects of birds and the like.
Designations
n This is a dynamic designation for niente, meaning “nothing” or no sound. It is not meant to be a vocalization.
Repeat ad lib. (at own tempo) until cue from conductor— The repeated patterns are to be played freely by the PRIMO pianist, as if they are emulating the beautiful unpredictability of the seagulls on the ocean-side.
stagger-breathe throughout— The composer prefers all the slurred, tied, and same-vowel melismas to be continuous sounds. The discretion of when to stagger-breathe is up to each section, although the composer recommends each section could switch on alternating measures or half-measures.
Program Notes:
Ocean Breeze
Fill my sails and set me free
Take me anywhere I don’t need to be
Let me sail unto the sun.
Ocean Breeze
Fill my heart with all your mysteries
Let me be a part of all the times of known
Let me live this dream before you take me home.
Ocean Breeze
Let me sail away unto the sun.
—Lewis Guthrie,
1978
Ocean Breeze is a setting of a poem written by my late uncle Lewis Guthrie, which he wrote when he was only 19. This poem's title &ts perfectly with its suave consonant endings for each stanza and its ethereal message. While no one knows what the poem means, Lewis was clearly eluding to an escape from life's deepest struggles. It seems to have a spiritual message, and may have been meant to serve as a religious allegory.
Sadly, Lewis died of a terrible disease in 1994 (just after I was born), but I grew up seeing this poem (on a card less than 3”x5”) on my family’s refrigerator for many years. Through seeing this poem, Lewis’ mysterious legacy lived on for me, and I sought to set this suave and touching poem to music.
I originally composed this work in 2013, when I was an undergraduate student. However, I sensed this piece needed more than what the original version offered. I therefore made several revisions until the summer of 2025, when I composed this version. Like the &rst version, this one uses the piano and voice as equal partners, where the fading of one group leads into the next. Unlike the previous version, however, this one includes many more allusions to oceanic sounds, as well as some aleatory.
Brian Stuck and the Belton Singers workshopped this piece at the University of MissouriKansas City Cantate! High School Chamber Music Festival on October 5 th, 2025, and premiered this work on October 21st, 2025 at the Belton High School Performing Arts Center.
—Ian Evans Guthrie
poem by Lewis Guthrie (d 1994)
Shimmery, shiny, and mysterious = 84
Take me a ny where I don’t need to be,
Take me a ny