A Sea Suite for Orchestra, Bon Voyage!
New from United Music Publishing Limited.
Set sail with Bon Voyage! — a vibrant, accessible, and irresistibly fun work for large orchestra, tailor-made for youth orchestras ready for a thrilling challenge. Bursting with colour, energy, and high-C heroics, this 15-minute adventure calls for triple woodwind, full brass and strings, harp, and a dazzling percussion battery featuring glockenspiel, xylophone, and corrugaphone. Its five seamless movements — Setting Sail, Doldrums, Hornpipe Bacchanalia, Swashbuckler, and Newfound Land — chart a bold musical journey from departure to discovery.
After four decades lying dormant in pencil manuscript, Bon Voyage! returns with renewed momentum in a new publication from United Music Publishing Limited. The edition includes a study score, conductor score, and full orchestral parts, available both for sale and for hire.
Audio
Listen to Bon Voyage!
United Music Publishing Ltd. include an audio sample, while short clips are available on YouTube
Notable Performances
Premièred 1st July 1988 by the combined Sherborne Schools Orchestras, this award-winning composition* went on to receive notable performances by Cambridge University and the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, the latter at a gala concert hosted by the BBC’s Richard Baker.
Composition
“Patrick Shelley, Sherborne’s Director of Music, invited me to compose a commemorative orchestral piece to bid bon voyage to the renowned headmaster, Robin MacNaghten. The title and nautical theme were immediately inspiring, and the work was completed in January 1988. This afforded six months of preparation for the performance.”
Hidden in the work is the dedicatee’s name using the simple format below, by substituting the musical notes in the top row for any letters beyond letter ‘G’ in the same column.
A B C D E F G
H I J K L M N
O P Q R S T U
Fragments of the theme appear throughout the work, and a complete statement, with a sprinkling of accidentals and octave transpositions, forms the Cor Anglais cadenza in the movement, Doldrums, which echoes in the finale’s Oboe solo.
Ideal for Family, Educational, and School Concerts with narrated versions
Perfect for educational, school, and family concerts, The Sea Suite offers a vivid and accessible concert experience for audiences of all ages. To bring the music even more fully to life, the suite can be introduced and narrated at selected moments using two specially written texts: a full version for general audiences and a shorter, story-rich version for children, designed to spark curiosity, paint colourful sea pictures in the imagination, and guide young listeners on an exciting musical journey through waves, weather, sailors’ dance, pirate attack, and coastal adventures. The narration and introduction are available to view and download below and may be freely adapted to suit your local audience. For narrated performances, clear music cues and score bar numbers show exactly where each spoken section fits, and when the music begins, pauses, and continues.
View and Download the Full Narration to Bon Voyage!
View and Download the Children’s Narration to Bon Voyage!
A Spoken Introduction
Comprising twelve musical extracts, the text found in the link below introduces young audiences to the story, musical themes, and the instruments of the orchestra. Ideally, this may then be followed by a complete, uninterrupted performance of the fifteen-minute suite.
View and Download the Introduction to Bon Voyage!
Other Orchestral Works by Garry Wilkinson from UMP Ltd.
Tom Sawyer’s Treasure Adventure (with narration)
Morte d’Arthur (with narration)
Concerto for Flute and Orchestra
Fanfare, Introduction and Verses to the Christmas Carol, O Come All Ye Faithful
*Bon Voyage! was the first prize-winning composition for orchestra in the UK’s Six Counties Festival. Consequently, it was awarded a performance by the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra and received a prize from the BBC presenter, Richard Baker.