“Waltz for Life” by Marsha Swanson doesn’t overstay its welcome, doesn’t build to any grand crescendo, and doesn’t need to. It just does what it came to do and leaves you wanting more of it.
The backstory adds a layer worth knowing. Marsha Swanson wrote this waltz at fourteen. She then placed it at the very front of her 2023 album “Near Life Experience,” a seventeen track record that moves through some heavy terrain, life, death, memory, the whole uncomfortable lot. Now, as the album marks its two year anniversary, she’s releasing the opener last. Intentionally. Conceptually. And it works better than it has any right to.
The strings are doing the real work here. They carry a delicacy that avoids tipping into sentiment, which is a harder line to walk than most composers appreciate. There’s a rise and fall to the arrangement that feels less like structure and more like breathing. The waltz rhythm does exactly what it should, it suggests movement, balance, something in motion without urgency.
What Swanson captures, and what makes this more than just a pretty album intro, is a very specific emotional register. It’s hopeful without being naive. Tender without being soft. At fourteen she was apparently already writing with that kind of nuance, which is either humbling or alarming depending on your own relationship with your teenage output.
The visual side of the project, an animation from Iranian director Sam Chegini that promises to blend film, claymation, rotoscopy and several other techniques into one piece, remains on hold while international communications in Iran are restored. It’s a frustrating wait given how well their previous collaborations have landed on the festival circuit.
Photo Credit: Marsha Swanson.
