(Carry Me) Across the Water (2020)

This soprano saxophone solo was written for Amy Dickson, who was reaching out to composers during the pandemic. In March 2020, I was in Sweden at the Visby International Centre for Composers when we got the call to ‘get home now’. Which prompted me to check with my airline, who had cancelled my return flight home. And that was a stressful proposition. I was missing my family in Melbourne but living and working in the quiet end of winter in Visby.

Getting back home was not just a new air ticket; it was a ferry booking back to the Swedish mainland at Nynäshamn. A bus to Stockholm and then the Arlanda Express out to airport. But in my haste, I bought another bus ticket instead, having nearly lost my luggage disembarking from the ferry. And so on. But the return journey half-way around the globe is a common rite of passage. I made it home. And looking back, I see that much of that journey was across water – on the Baltic Sea, and over the numerous oceans in the air. And the idea of safe passage sits there as a secular prayer. Carry me, across the water. It’s an intuitive wish for deliverance. Something I attempted to capture in this piece.

The premiere was given by Amy Dickson online as part of her Solo Sessions Project on 17 August 2020. She subsequently also performed the work in a live broadcast for BBC Radio 3 on 25 July 2022

Stuart Greenbaum