*The Following Press Release Was Issued By Clandestine PR*
Singer-Songwriter Mare Berger Releases New Album Dreaming Blue
(photo credit: Di Anna Mar)
Stream via Bandcamp
Stream The Full Album
Berger’s vocals take on an enchanting storybook element, flickering with a gentle dreamy glimmer. - Under The Radar
RIYL: Mary Oliver's poetry, Joni Mitchell, Leonard Cohen, Regina Spektor, Joanna Newsom
Piano and voice, twinned conduits for the depths and riches of human expression, here offer streams of compassion, desperation, defiance, and renewal for the listener’s consideration. There is a sparkling determination that spangles each song of Mare Berger’s “Dreaming Blue” like dew on summer leaves.
Like Joni Mitchell, an artist famed for composing melodically unusual, folk-and jazz-inflected pieces that lay bare and ruthlessly confront the artist’s, the lover’s, the woman’s fears themselves–fears of loneliness, of heartbreak, of emotional desolation and directionless-ness–Berger takes her listeners by both hands and implores them to witness the undulating pangs of her simultaneous return-to-self and rebirth.
Accompanied in bursts throughout by musicians such as cellist Rachel Gawell Burns, bassist Shayna Dulberger, drummer Jason Nazary and pedal steel player Myk Freeman (not to mention many others,) Berger–a long-celebrated, Brooklyn-based pianist who can here be found mapping the contours of her abilities as vocalist and songwriter–has created a testament to and a healing balm for the grief of a failed relationship.
Despite such an experience bordering on the truly universal, not all who navigate it are able to conjure a properly relatable, compelling and sonically varied depiction of the journey. As for Berger, however, her honesty is unvarnished and her delivery is deft and truly interesting – there is no fear of misunderstanding or being unable to follow her along her path.
The album is thoroughly infused with natural imagery, both unforgiving and lush, full of rushing and sometimes crashing bodies of water, and the dubious stillness of fungal groves; it is peppered with memories of the banal and sublime; it contains the soft cries of insects and the wounded soul alike.
The landscape is varied and by turns treacherous, hushed, vast and winding and there is no moment where the guide is not vulnerable. In the final moments of one’s time spent with her music, however, she lays hand to shoulder, placid and steady-gazed, and with a whispering hum, nods her head with sureness to the open road ahead.
Mare Berger wrote:
“I wrote these songs to heal from a breakup. Each song helped me to shift from a raw, searing, narrow-feeling pain, to the larger ocean of collective sadness and connection. The grief became the water that moved me, that held me, that transformed me. I learned how to surrender to loss instead of resisting it, to merge into water – the constant impermanence of life. Each song was an incredible journey that started with desperation, and then softened and moved into the sea of self-love – a new home for me to expand into. The love I was missing became the love I needed.
There are songs about impermanence — “Light falls underwater, but we can’t stay there long, to see the glow.” And another about transience – “Fireflies in the night, shine then lose their bright. Just a flicker, just a flicker of light.”
Songs as prayers to help myself surrender to water –“Oh, let the water take me, let the water take me, where I’m bound to go.” Songs about how water connects us all – “We all drink the same blue, feel our interwoven roots.” Songs as a mythical journey underground into the unknown, where I follow mushroom roots to find my way home – “Can the darkness show me where to go?”
Songs as a fantastical journey in the water where I swim against the current to try to find my former love, until a dragon sends me back the other way – to the island of myself. “High waves, wind and night, all my life I’ve only known a love for which I fight.”
Songs as vessels for memories – moments that flow through us and become the home that holds us –“Sunsets that painted mountains red, like volcanoes in the sky and the stars that fell into our eyes, as we lay, under the night. I gave you everything I have and now I'm left with everything I have.” Songs about how breaking open with pain helps us connect to the source that will heal us. -– “Falling backwards, in the verse of night, stars move forward, broken bells of light. I’m still aching, I can’t stop breaking. This is how I’ll be free.” - Mare Berger
Artist Bio:
Mare started playing piano at age 3 and at age 5, was featured on Iowa City Public Television playing piano with an orchestra. Mare attended Indiana University, studying jazz piano and went on to receive an M.A. at William Paterson in composition and jazz arranging, studying with Jim McNeely.
In 2006, Mare was a member of the BMI Jazz Composers Workshop and in 2007, had music premiered at the Renee Weiler Concert Hall. In the summer of 2009, Mare opened up for Mos Def (now known as Yasiin Bey), playing keyboard with the singer Lilla D’Mone. Mare was a recipient of the 2011 Young Jazz Composers Awards and played piano at the Aaron Davis Hall with the Tamar-Kali Group. In 2012, Mare played accordion and synthesizer in the pit for the Broadway musical, Evita.
Mare was an artist in residence at the Banff Centre, Harold Arts and ElMERGE. In the Fall of 2013, Mare went on tour in Europe for 7 weeks, playing and creating sound installations for Tara Rynders’s project: You and Me. In 2014, Mare had the opportunity to accompany Josephine Foster at the Manhattan Inn and released a solo CD, Built on Water, of all original songs for voice and piano. Mare was a fellow in the Hemispheric Institute’s 2015 EMERGENYC program and made a video on gentrification, entitled White Out.
In 2016, The Berger Siblings released a CD, Maybe So, featuring Mare’s original songs. In 2017, Mare’s short film, White Out, was chosen to be in the Fair Play Film Festival in Miami, Florida. Mare started and co-directed The Moon Choir, a choir featuring queer and trans people plus allies. Mare had the honor to play at the Jazz Standard in January, 2018 with Arthur Vint and the Associates.
From 2014-2018, Mare curated a performance series, The Moon Show, which promoted queer, trans and other underrepresented artists. In June of 2018, Mare’s song cycle for string quartet + voices premiered at Threes Brewing in Brooklyn and Mare played at The Bitter End with the NY Songwriters Circle in 2019. In 2020, Mare released an album featuring original songs for voices and string quartet called “The Moon is Always Full.” Mare released another album in September 2023 featuring all songs about water and embracing change. After studying extensively and playing Classical, Jazz, Brazilian, Balkan and Experimental styles, Mare now likes to write dreamy, hopeful songs of nature and justice.
Mare’s prose has been published in the New York Times, Tom Tom Magazine and The Body is Not an Apology. Mare believes in the importance of collaboration as a way of fighting fascism and oppression and facilitates regular workshops encouraging people to imagine together: Collective Songwriting for Collective Liberation.
album art
Tracklist:
Where I'm Bound to Go
Prospect Park
The Red Dragon
Glow
Fireflies
The Same Blue
Willow
Duchess of Fungi
What I Still Have
Broken Bells of Light
Music, lyrics and arrangements by: Mare Berger
Featuring:
Mare Berger, piano/voice, and guitar/voice on track 5
Melody Berger, vocals (tracks 7, 8)
Lindsey Stormo, vocals (tracks 1, 10)
Rachel Gawell Burns, cello (tracks 2, 3, 8)
Shayna Dulberger, acoustic bass (tracks 3, 8, 9)
Chris Ball, electric bass (tracks 6, 7)
Jason Nazary, drums (tracks 6, 7, 8)
Myk Freedman, lap steel (tracks 6, 7)
Liz Kosack, rhodes/voice (track 7)
Nathaniel Morgan, alto sax (track 8)
Andrew Sheron, mandolin (track 3)
—--
Recorded by Andrew Sheron at Conveyor Studio
Tracks 5&10 recorded by Chris Ball at Fun Room Studio
Overdubs recorded by Chris Ball on tracks 1&6
Overdubs recorded by Nathaniel Morgan on tracks 1,2,3,4,7,8
Mixed by: Nathaniel Morgan
Mastered by: Matt Leffler-Schulman at Mobtown Studios
Co-assistant producers: Lindsey Stormo & Liz Kosack
Cover Art: Amandine Benincasa
Layout by: Liz Kosack
Special thanks to School of Song and friends from that community that helped me believe in these songs. Thanks to friends that listened during the process — Ernest, Liz K, Matt Schlatter, Eli Wirtschafter, Lu, Ilusha, Jean, Bambi & family. Thanks to water, thanks to change.
Artist Links:
Website
Bandcamp
YouTube
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