Wind Ensemble

Brass Choir

Choir

Mental Gymnastics (2011)
Wind on the Island (2005)

Duration: 7’45”
Written for SSAATTBB

First three score pages (pdf)

Excerpt 1            Excerpt 2             Excerpt 3            Excerpt 4

Or to hear a full recording, click here to go to soundcloud.

Wind on the Island was commissioned by Dr. Dirk Garner, then Director of Choral Studies at Oklahoma State University. It is my second setting of a Pablo Neruda poem and second piece for Dirk. Though it was originally composed as a companion piece to its predecessor, In You the Earth, I believe that the two pieces are more successful when heard individually.  In August 2007, Wind on the Island was selected as the first place winner of the University of South Carolina (USC) Choral Composition Contest. The award resulted in a performance at USC in spring 2008 and a subsequent one at the Forbidden City Concert Hall in Beijing as part of the Cultural Prelude to the Olympics.

Wind on the Island

The wind is a horse:
hear how he runs
through the sea, through the sky.

He wants to take me: listen
how he roves the world
to take me far away.

Hide me in your arms
just for this night,
while the rain breaks
against sea and earth
its innumerable mouth.

Listen how the wind
calls to me galloping
to take me far away.

With your brow on my brow,
with your mouth on my mouth,
our bodies tied
to the love that consumes us,
let the wind pass
and not take me away.

Let the wind rush
crowned with foam,
let it call to me and seek me
galloping in the shadow,
while I, sunk
beneath your  big eyes,
just for this night
shall rest, my love.                                                                                         

Poem by Pablo Neruda                                                     
English translation by Donald D. Walsh

Contact the composer directly to inquire about score/parts: mikedambrosio@gmail.com

In You the Earth (2004)

Solo Works

Music for Two

Chamber Music for Larger Ensembles