Buysoundtrax.com
By Randall Larson

Miss Lettie and Me is the latest promotional soundtrack issued by Alan Williams’ private label, Silverscreen Music.  The film was a 2002 Turner Network TV drama significant mostly in pairing Burt Reynolds with Mary Tyler Moore (returning to the small screen for the first time in years) as a estranged couple brought back together over the holidays by their feisty young niece who visits the aging woman’s isolated farm.  Williams’ music is everything you would expect from a heartfelt television drama like this – and it’s wonderful because of it.  Comprising two-dozen mostly short cues featuring folk instruments like steel and nylon guitars, mandolin, flute, oboe, clarinet, and piano (performed by the composer), the score is intimate and poignant, embodying the distant characters with true emotions and drawing them together musically much as the young child does in the film.  “You Watch Over Things,” in which the score’s main theme becomes a hymn-like soliloquy for piano and guitar, is a musical moment to be treasured; its reprisal in “Tallulah is Gone” is similarly affecting.  The closeness and quiet poise of Williams’ instrumental ensemble accentuates the film’s already evocative immediacy and heightens the film’s cool drama and its moments of joy (“Thanksgiving Dinner,” for example) with the serene harmonies and gentle tones of the guitars and piano.  The pallet also gives substance to the film’s rural setting, recalling its environment even while the film itself remains fairly close indoors.  Alan Williams’ penchant for evoking the innermost feelings of his characters, bolstering the screen performances with lyrical nuances of melody and timbre and accent, is made for films like this, and it’s very pleasing to see a score like this not left forgotten.