I made some music, and I’m so excited to share it with you.
My new 6-track EP, “What’s Begun”, is coming this fall 2021! Rowan Sway is my indie folk pop project that blends both acoustic and electronic sounds along with a hint of celtic vibe. Some people tell me it sounds like Loreena McKennitt.
Between now and November, I’ll be releasing a new song each month. The title track, "What's Begun" is out now on your favorite listening platform!
Spotify
Apple Music
iTunes
YouTube Music
Amazon
If I had to describe what this album is about in one word, it would be:
Transformation.
One of the most interesting - and challenging - things about being a human is that we don’t get to hold onto the way things are. Confucius summed it up nicely:
“They must often change, those who would be constantly in happiness.”
Life since 2020 has been a pretty fierce practice lab in the art of transformation. What do you do when the way things were gets blown up? How do you pick up the pieces and move forward? How do you find joy again?
Good living is kind of like baking a cake. And change is inevitably the main ingredient. If you can meet life’s flow of circumstances, other people and your own desires with a recipe for how to transform it into something delicious, you’re onto something.
The songs on “What’s Begun” are kind of like an exploration of the different ways to bake the change cake – and all the different flavors of feeling that come along with it.
Sometimes transformation hits us massively and without warning. Take Corona in 2020. Or my surprise move from Boston to Switzerland in 2017, shortly followed by my parents’ divorce after a lifetime of being a super tight family.
I think of these heavy-duty clusters of challenging changes as “life storms” that blow in suddenly and obliterate the way things were, and this is an idea I explore in the title track, “What’s Begun”. You can read more and listen to it here!
Other changes you dream of, ask for, and work hard to create. It can feel like you’re putting your heart and soul into them, and you still don’t know if you’re getting anywhere. Next month’s track “Space Between My Hands” chews on this idea a bit more, along with one of the biggest lessons the last few years of change have taught me:
What I’ve learned it that whether or not you’ve invited any given change, if you really commit to living the transformation with an open heart and mind, magic can happen. Things probably won’t look like how you expected, and it surely won’t always be easy. But it might turn out even better than you thought possible.
Very little in my life looks the same as it did 5 years ago, and I’m guessing that’s true for you, too. My hope is that the songs on “What’s Begun” are a place for you to be with your own ongoing transformations. And I hope they’ll remind you that times of transition and uncertainty can come with the best, most mysterious gifts!
Love,
Kate