Separation Songs
Cold Blue Music
October 2019
Performed by the Eclipse Quartet
Sarah Thornblade and Sara Parkins, violin, Alma Lisa Fernandez, viola, Maggie Parkins, cello
Recorded, mixed, and mastered by Scott Fraser
Separation Songs is a haunting hour-long continuous work for two string quartets. In it, composer-performer-music technologist Matt Sargent systemically juxtaposes and weaves together an array of 18th-century composer William Billings’s hymn tunes, subtly altering certain aspects of them via real-time-generated variations as the piece unfolds. - Cold Blue Music
“Separation Songs is a powerful re-imagining of the early American congregational hymn, and succeeds brilliantly in bringing a sharpened sense of the transcendental into the 21st century.” - Paul Muller, Sequenza21
“There’s repetition, and then, there’s repetition on such a cosmically vast plane.” - Marc Medwin, Fanfare Magazine
“A modern work that seduces the listener with the sensuality of its rustic sound, the serenity of its tone, and the sincerity of its tender phrases. Assuredly, the gentle, keening cry of Eclipse's strings will stay with you long after this lovely recording ends.” - Ron Schepper, Textura Magazine
“My two favourite albums of this past year each reckon, complicatedly, with Americanness. Matt Sargent's “Separation Songs” features a double string quartet playing arrangements of Williams Billings tunes that morph and bleed into one another.” - Chris Cerrone, Textura Magazine (Top 10 Albums of 2019)