"The record is a haunting collection of tracks that are difficult to even call songs; they feel organic, as though sprung directly from the earth."
-Atwood Magazine
Into the Mystery, Andrea Tomasi’s sophomore album, is a balm for the soul in a time of environmental and political tumult. The music arose—as it did for many artists—in the midst of the pandemic, when societal dread and newfound isolation left her asking the question: “What can I offer as a source of healing for the world?”
In a cramped, rickety bedroom in Portland, Oregon, Tomasi spent nearly a year writing and recording Into the Mystery, an expansive soundscape woven with striking vocal harmonies and lyrical inspiration from some of history’s greatest poets, Wendell Berry to Rilke. She skillfully blends aspects of new age and ambient music with traditional folk and Celtic leanings to create a meditative, eight-track journey with blissful highs and haunting lows.
Early in the process, Tomasi reached out to Jeremy Thal, a multi-instrumentalist best known for his stake in Briars of North America. Briars’ latest album, Supermoon, was released in June 2021 to critical acclaim, including a slot on NPR’s All Songs Considered. Thal, a co-founder of Found Sound Nation’s globe-trotting musical group, OneBeat, reached deep into his cadre of talented international collaborators to add strings, horns, and percussion to Into the Mystery.
Tomasi’s use of poetry is rooted in her improvisational singing style. Every so often, she explains, a certain poem will simply feel like an invitation to create a melody. From there, it’s an organic, unfolding process of being present with the stanzas, the words, and herself. “Poets already have this very lyrical way of speaking to the divine, or the unseen, which is really what I feel like my music is in service to. I’m just lucky when I get permission to use the words.”
Tomasi, a lifelong vocal artist raised in the same Central Vermont-based musical wellspring that produced fellow folk musicians Anaïs Mitchell, Abigail Nessen-Bengson, and Moira Smiley (the latter two were formative mentors), has shifted and honed her craft in the decade since her first release, Hurricane Dream. Into the Mystery is a culmination of untold hours spent in vocal meditation and experimenting with embodied improvisation. Listeners might hear hints of contemporary new music artists like Beautiful Chorus, Silvia Nakkach, and Ayla Nereo.
Tomasi hopes that Into the Mystery will lift listeners out of suffering—even for a brief moment—through its blissful, organic lullabies and in the rich lodes of poetic wisdom, unearthed and shining through song. “This album is an invitation for people to be still inside of themselves—to be led on a journey, and into the mystery,” explains Tomasi, “so that they might come into deeper connection with themselves and with life.”
credits
released September 21, 2021
All melodies and vocals by Andrea Tomasi
Contributing Musicians:
Jeremy Thal on French horn, melodica, and bass, tracks 2, 4, 5
Greg Chudzick on upright bass, tracks 3, 6, 7, 8
Tommy Crane on drums, track 4
Simon Jermyn on guitar, track 4
Jose Pablo Jimenez Henriquez on kamancheh, track 5
Jeremy Marais on clarinet, track 7
Spring Dawn Birds Olympic Peninsula, WA, track 4. Recorded by Ebbtide Sound
Produced and mixed by Jeremy Thal
Mastered by Dave McNair Studios
Album artwork by Melinda Braathen
Lyrics and sources:
Track 2:
The Peace of Wild Things by Wendell Berry
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
Breath, You Invisible Poem by Rainer Maria Rilke as translated by Joanna Macy and Anita Barrows in Rilke’s Book of Hours
Breath, you invisible poem!
Pure, continuous exchange
with all that is, flow and counterflow
where rhythmically I come to be.
Each time a wave that occurs just once
in a sea I discover I am.
You, innermost of oceans,
you, infinitude of space.
How many far places were once
within me. Some winds
are like my own child.
When I breathe them now, do they know me again?
Air, you silken surround,
completion and seed of my words.
Track 4:
Verse from a myth of the Oglala Sioux Nation, the story of the White Bison Spirit Woman, as told by the medicine man, Black Elk.
With visible breath I am walking
A voice I am sending as I walk
In a sacred manner, I am walking
With visible tracks I am walking
In a sacred manner, I walk
Track 6:
First verse by Rumi, second two verses by Andrea Tomasi
The minute I heard my first love story
I started looking for you
Not knowing how blind that was
Lover’s don’t finally meet somewhere
They’re in each other all along
As we stand here, in our love story
What I understand now
Is to see the Beloved in
Your eyes reflections of what’s inside
We’ve been together all along
I will walk with you
And we’ll make more stories, that our hearts can dream
Some day all things will fall away
What stays is the love between us
We’ve been together all along
Track 7:
Galaxy and Find your Love, words by Andrea Tomasi
I am here now
Time and space surrounds this reality
sensing is this body
Illusion is ours we create
The truth is in the source
Remembering our nature as
A galaxy of stars
Come and find your heart
Come and find your love
When you are lost
Come inside, come inside, come inside
Sit by my hearth
You are welcome here
You belong here
Come in, come in.
Andrea’s music emerges from presence. Her interest lies in the expression of voice as a resonance of her felt-sense. Andrea
is inspired by invitations from Life to create music, and often utilizes poetry as a gateway to song. Through a practice of deep listening and attunement, her music is brought forth from a source greater than herself, in divine collaboration....more
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