Music and Recording Features

The Tight Lines Project The Music

Sidebar 3: The Music

Tight Lines: Music by Sasha Matson (DDD) STPH022-2 (CD); (DAA) STPH022-1 (LP, footnote 1)

[1] Cut to Bar Interior, for string quartet and piano 8:29

Annunciation, for violin and harp with echoes
[2] Presence 4:02
[3] Annunciation 5:07
[4] Reflection 6:27

[5] Berkeley Hills, for mixed septet 4:36

Tight Lines, for string orchestra and keyboards
[6] Headwaters 4:59
[7] Dark Pool 5:20
[8] Jigging the Reel 5:27
[9] Rise to the Fly, Run to the Sea 5:46

Total Playing Time: 50:22


Footnote 1: Side 1 of the LP has Cut to Bar Interior and Annunciation; Side 2, Berkeley Hills and Tight Lines.

COMMENTS
jimtavegia's picture
Submitted by jimtavegia on April 15, 2017 - 1:30am

Your prices are a bargain, by the way. Thanks for that.

jimtavegia's picture
Submitted by jimtavegia on April 29, 2017 - 10:09am

AD has written a great piece on this excellent score and performance, so I will not try and add to that. What I would ask you to do do not listen to this music the first couple of times as background music. Take some personal time and let this music and performance take you someplace, as it did me.

The Key here for me is Mr. Matson's scoring experience which is in full bloom here. Have a seat in your favorite listening chair with your favorite beverage and let the music transport you somewhere in your mind's eye. It will.

Some of the tracks will have abrupt time changes that will quickly take you from one place to another if you let it. Each of the three days that I spent listening to the entire CD my mind took me somewhere else, some affected by my day's events and others just because I allowed it to remind of some other place and time.

I often thought how some of the tracks would have fit right into two of my favorite movies: The King's Speech and The Book Thief; not that there was anything wrong with either of the musical scores of those movies, as there is not and I enjoy them, but it does prove to me that there might not be a definitive score of any movie...that another composer might have a slightly different take that would work just as well.

I am not going to point out any particular tracks as I don't want to spoil it for anyone, but enjoy coming to your own conclusions as to what images can be conjured up by each listener as they enjoy this great music recorded especially well.

I think that this is one of the best sounding CDs in my collection. I am just not one of those folks who is down on digital. I will buy the 2496 version when the download is available and what I expect is what I hear in my consumer grade home studio...2496 sounds great and analog like to me. I do find 24192 even better, but it is marginally so and often very hard to discern the improvement to my nearly 70 year old ears. I can easily hear the improvement in 2496 over redbook in terms of space around the instruments and a smoothness that is unmistakable. I look forward to it.

I also have to say that this CD has to be one of the bargains of the year and every Stereophile subscriber needs this if for nothing else than an academic exercise, but you will find it is much more than that and you will listen to it many times over.

Enjoy the score to the movie that your mind's eye will take you. Great fun.

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