Singer and songwriter Marsha Swanson is releasing “Waltz for Life” on January 30th. The track is the final release from Swanson’s 17 track album “Near Life Experience,” which will mark its two year anniversary on January 19th.
“Waltz For Life” shines a bright light on Marsha. It contains energy and hope, tender optimism and joyful longing. Marsha wrote the waltz at only 14 years of age, returning to it later to use as the perfect opener for her album “Near Life Experience”. With the later works on the album covering themes of life, death, and memory, the waltz represents the part of life that celebrates existence and possibility.
Dynamic strings convey the metaphor of life as a dance: delicate, graceful, and full of movement. The waltz itself suggests rhythm, movement and balance, the pulse of life in motion. There’s a fresh vibrancy to the waltz’s rhythm, giving it a natural rise and fall that feels personal yet relatable.
“It is conceptually fitting for me to release the first track on the album last,” says Marsha. “I wanted the album to end by circling back to the beginning again and hence concluding the perpetual cycle of life and death.”
Chegini’s new animation echoes this idea by completing the visual cycle, bringing together multiple styles into one. “The animation will be a combination of all the techniques I have used in our previous videos,” Chegini explains. “It will be a mixture of film, VFX, 2D cut out, traditional frame by frame on paper, rotoscopy and Claymation.”
This is yet another project from Marsha Swanson and Iranian animator and music video director Sam Chegini, whose earlier videos together have caught attention and accolades from around the world. However, the production is currently on hold as we wait for international communications in Iran to be restored.
Standing at only 1 minute and 11 seconds in length and intended only as an album opener, “Waltz for Life” has garnered its own momentum and is now standing in its own right as a current semifinalist in the classical category of the international U.K. Songwriting Contest where it will progress to compete in the finals.
It comes as listeners are still finding and connecting with “Near Life Experience,” an album that has meant a lot to people since it came out two years ago.