Winter and the Sacred Tree - A Live Concert Recording

To Wake You

The Tree has always been a powerful symbol in spiritual imagery around the globe, reflecting the grandeur and mystery of nature, both rooted in the earth and touching the heavens. As we know, the Tree has become an integral part of winter iconography, particularly as seen with the Christmas tree.

It was while living in California that Karoline,

The Tree has always been a powerful symbol in spiritual imagery around the globe, reflecting the grandeur and mystery of nature, both rooted in the earth and touching the heavens. As we know, the Tree has become an integral part of winter iconography, particularly as seen with the Christmas tree.

It was while living in California that Karoline, with some distance from her native Denmark, was drawn into a deeper reflection on Nordic mythology. Winter’s going and coming of the sun was one central theme. Most poignantly, the World Tree of the North, Yggdrasil, appears to be intertwined* with the decorated trees of the Christian tradition. Our exploration of these mysteries soon gave birth to songs, and eventually grew into this Winter and the Sacred Tree concert.

Not only a manifestation of Scandinavian roots and a love ode to the Nordic light feast, these songs also reflect a personal exploration through various traditions, a journey that we are sure resonates with many people. It has been very enriching to write and offer these songs to European as well as American audiences.

The original compositions integrate several ancient sources that have helped vessel and expand our reflections - How deep do our own roots go? How far can we dare to expand our connectedness to all things and to each other?

From the beginning, we imagined the concert as a communal celebration - an opportunity for people to come together. We decided we would request that the audience not applaud between songs, but rather, stay in quiet reflection - that is, until the final song, when everyone sings along.

The recording itself took place on March 9, 2019, in Damon Castillo’s Laurel Lane Studio in San Luis Obispo, California. Two concerts, two takes, with a live audience. It was essential that community was there to help us capture the presence, the concentration and the magic of the moment. We are deeply grateful to those in the room for the energy they all added to the recording.

We invite you the listener to join us in the room, and on our journey into joyful celebration of the winter season - and into the arising and thriving of community everywhere…

Mark and Karoline, November 2022

    1. Ronald Murphy, S.J. Tree of Salvation: Yggdrasil and the Cross in the North. Oxford University Press. 2013.
Read more…
  1. 1
    0:00/4:37
  2. 2
    0:00/5:02
  3. 3
    0:00/2:25
  4. 4
    0:00/5:29
  5. 5
    0:00/3:37
  6. 6
    0:00/4:59
  7. 7
    0:00/3:33
  8. 8
    0:00/2:28
  9. 9
    0:00/5:14

Contact

Booking & Press:

towakeyou@gmail.com 

DK: +45 7179 3310

USA: +1 805 242 3101

 

Video - Where The Day Went

Video - To Wake You on "What Is It?"

Reviews

“Not knowing what to expect, I'm a blank slate entering the early show featuring To Wake You. For me, there is something primitively soothing about the music I was hearing and it went straight to my soul. Between the musical harmony and the rhythmic melodies,

To Wake You is taking the small crowd into a hypnotic state. It was at that moment I realized what music could do to people!

Can a mere song change people's minds? I doubt that it is so. But a song can infiltrate your heart and the heart may change your mind. To Wake You replayed past memories, awoken forgotten worlds and made minds travel. “

#tobiethepunk

 

…It was at Esalen that I had the great pleasure of hearing To Wake You in Concert a couple of months ago (…) If you ever get a chance to hear them live -- together as To Wake You or solo -- jump at it. I promise you'll be glad you did.

-Ty Webster // Simply-Begin.com

 

“Where The Day Went” is an outlier in modern collections of music which represent the unfathomable pace of globalization. Stitching together a quiet reflection, To Wake You capture their truly abstract form within the cinematography of the piece.

The song itself is a peacefully crafted candidate for exploring how time can so easily slip away. Any perceived vagueness ought to be swept aside, and instead taken as a prompt to seek the deeper significance of their creation.

While some listeners may find it challenging to engage with, the philosophical nature of Mark and Karoline’s musical collaborations invite an appreciation of finer details. As a standalone introduction to the duo’s talents, excitement should be a natural response to how close we are to the release of Beauty In The Smallest Things — whose title only compounds those observations. 4.5/5.

 -Michael Brummett  // Impose Magazine, January 31, 2017

 

"The reason you shouldn’t listen to something just once and then dismiss it is because you may miss out on gems such as To Wake You – “Not Gonna Fall". A sparse and sprawling track of seemingly hopeful love, quiet positivity or perhaps perseverance most likely all three.

To Wake You’s Karoline Hausted and Mark Davis certainly conjure up romantic dreams of fabled The Swell Season and this is that feeling of comfortable vs. uncertainty meets you canthat makes this track swell for all seasons forward moving romantics."

-Walter Price // globaltexanchronicles.com

 

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