Anthony Vine
Sound Spring

released September 20, 2024

About the album:

Sound Spring presents Anthony Vine’s soundtrack to the anthology film by Catalina with the same name.

The score, performed by an ensemble of violin, daxophone, percussion, trombone, and electric guitar, takes field recordings from the film’s locale, Yellow Springs, Ohio, as its basis and asks the musicians to make “doublings” of sounds found therein; the musicians attune themselves to the recordings of environmental sounds (traffic, commercial noise, etc.) by creating sounds that fuse with them. The musicians’ performances are individually captured and then layered and combined with recordings from the film and the other musicians. The result is a soundtrack that, despite its complexity, does not add its own affective commentary, but amplifies and deepens what is present. This approach to the soundtrack is in keeping with the documentary nature of the film that through interviews with residents explores the town’s complex history. 

Sound Spring has nine parts. Some of them, like “Donna” and “Talon”, bear the names of the interviewees from whose scenes the field sounds come. Other movements are less tied to a particular scene, like "Spring" and "Reflections," both of which deal with the sound and theme of water that runs throughout the film.

For this soundtrack release, the music is presented in an expanded version beyond what is heard in the film. As the composer puts it: Without the constraints of the film, I let the musicians’ recordings sprawl out fully, and overlaid them with “location sound” from both the film and cutting room floor. Braiding these two sources together created unexpected narrative dramas. Donna’s bicycle frayed apart skittishly. The environs surrounding Karen muttered incessantly. Electric razors in the barbershop hummed deeply. In this way, every track became a scene of its own, evoking characters and places from traces of the film.

About the composer:

Anthony Vine is a composer based in Brooklyn, New York. He creates music about spirituality, beauty, and sound itself. His work across different media, including performance, installation, and sound sculpture, is minimal in form yet acoustically dynamic and deeply emotive. Vine's music has been presented by music and art institutions—Blank Forms, Carnegie Hall, Lévy Gorvy, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Ultima Festival, etc.—and performed by orchestras, chamber ensembles, and musicians—Quatuor Bozzini, Gareth Davis, Longleash, The Minnesota Orchestra, Yarn/Wire, etc.—and released on labels—Cassauna/Imprec, Cantaloupe, Galtta Media, and Kuyin. Vine is the recipient of the 2024 Rome Prize in Musical Composition at the American Academy in Rome and the 2016 Gaudeamus International Composers Award. Other honors include fellowships from MacDowell, Watermill Center, Camargo Foundation, and Bogliasco Foundation. Vine is a teaching artist at The Filomen M. D'Agostino Greenberg Music School, where he helps people with vision loss pursue their study of music. He also directs the imprint Bazetta University Press. 

More at https://anthonyvine.com/ 

Tracklist:

1. Karen [2:29]
2. Spring [5:16]       
3. Lou [3:45]
4. Rose [5:05]
5. Projector [4:34]
6. Donna [5:33]
7. Barber [2:47]
8. Talon [2:09]
9. Reflections [7:14]

Credits:

Composition by Anthony Vine.
Performed by: Maya Bennardo, violin, Daniel Fishkin, daxophone, Ryan Packard, percussion, Will Lang, trombone, and Anthony Vine, electric guitar. 
Mixed and mastered by Michael Hammond.
Artwork: still from the movie Sound Spring by Catalina.
Album design by Kristofer Svensson.