Years After Her Mother’s Sudden Passing, GRAMMY® Award-Winning Composer Returns to the Moment That Changed Her Life — and Creates NOMADICA  —  a Dreamlike Realm of Memory and Music, Where she Finds Connection, Healing, and Adventure

NOMADICA: A Dreamlike Realm of Memory and Music

PROJECT DESCRIPTION

NOMADICA: A Dreamlike Realm of Memory and Music is a live performance work that expands on Carla Patullo’s GRAMMY Award-winning album into an immersive, listening-focused environment shaped by spatial sound, layered vocals, live electric viola, and animated shadow projections. Departing from a traditional concert format, the work unfolds as a shared encounter with sound, memory, and human connection, allowing perception to shift as visceral reactions unfold from the “primitive” animations.

The piece emerged from the sudden loss of Patullo’s mother in a car accident years ago. Rather than recounting this experience through narrative or text, NOMADICA approaches grief through sound, texture, vulnerability, and time, imagining the conversations that never occurred and the emotional landscapes that remain. It considers how memory is carried in the body and how sound can function as a bridge between inner and outer worlds.

The performance unfolds slowly and intentionally. Patullo performs with voice, keyboard, and live electronics alongside electric violist Martha Mooke, known for her work with Laurie Anderson and Philip Glass. Field recordings drawn from trains, water, wind, and manipulated tape that stretch and bend time move us between the familiar and the abstract, creating a sense of motion and suspension. Shadow animation and archival imagery by animation artist and architect Elizabeth Beech, whose work shapes the visual language through shadow, light, and metaphor, are projected in sync with the music, evoking longing, distance, and the pursuit of connection.

The music draws from neo-classical, ambient, and experimental practices. The human voice functions as melody, texture, and breath, while strings, electronics, and subtle frequencies interact in real time. There is no spoken text. Meaning emerges through tone, harmony, silence, and resonance. The open-ended emotional arc in the show allows space for individual interpretation. Audience members may encounter intimacy, unease, release, or quiet acceptance, bringing their own memories into the listening experience.

Described in press as “raw, honest, poignant, soothing, and vulnerable,” NOMADICA in its live form extends these qualities into a contemplative space for deep listening and reflection.

“These compositions became a therapeutic realm where I travel to connect with my mom, heal old wounds, and experience the conversations we never got to have” says Patullo.

LIVE PERFORMANCE FOOTAGE

ARTIST STATEMENT

I am a Los Angeles-based composer and artist working at the intersection of music, storytelling, and immersive performance. My work is genre fluid, drawing from cinematic scoring, neo-classical practices, ambient textures, and experimental sounds. The human voice (mine and choral) is a central thread I use to create sonic worlds that explore memory, healing, and human connection, both worldly and in dreamlike realms.

My artistic practice is deeply informed by lived experience. The sudden loss of my mother at a young age and my own near-death experience both continue to shape my work and drive my curiosity around grief, resilience, memory, and the ways sound can function as a bridge between inner and outer worlds. I am particularly interested in working with frequencies and subtle sonic movement as a way of guiding the mind and psyche into altered states of listening and awareness. NOMADICA, my latest project, brings these questions into a live immersive form, blending voice, strings, electronics, and large-scale visual projections to create a shared contemplative space that conjures dreams and reveals the human desire for connection.

At the heart of my work, there is an exploration of this human connection, hoping to uncover something deep within our memories and subconscious minds. Can sound bring back someone I’ve lost? What happens after death and where does love go? I am drawn to music that carries emotional depth, how sound and performance can move between memory, imagined realms, and the present here and now.

I am a 2x GRAMMY Award-winning artist. My most recent album about the lost-and-found connection with my mom, NOMADICA, just won the award for Best New Age, Ambient, and Chant Album in February 2026. It is a follow-up to my album SO SHE HOWLS, which also won the same Grammy Award in 2024 and explored healing and resilience after my own near-death experience. Day to day, I compose music for film, television, and as a collaborative artist, and my work has been presented in concert halls, film festivals, and immersive performance spaces, often integrating live musicians, electronics, animated visuals, and spatial sound. I’ve known that I wanted to write music since I was five years old, and I studied music and composition at Berklee College of Music, and my practice continues to evolve through collaboration across musical genres, film, and visual art.

TECHNICAL REQUIREMENTS

NOMADICA: A Dreamlike Realm of Memory & Music is designed to be adaptable to the technical capabilities of the venue, with an emphasis on high-quality sound, spatial listening, and integrated visuals.

Audio:
The performance requires a sound board with a minimum of eight inputs to support live vocals, electric viola, synthesizers, electronics, and playback of field recordings. A stereo speaker configuration is the minimum requirement, but the work benefits from an expanded speaker setup when available, allowing sound to move through the space and deepen the listening experience. I am interested in working closely with the technical team to explore configurations that support spatial sonic depth within the venue.

Visuals and Video:
Visual elements include archival footage and silhouette animation. A minimum of one projector plus a surface to project upon is requested for presentation, with a preferred configuration of up to four projectors to allow for layered and spatial imagery. Multiple projection surfaces support the work’s relationship to memory, depth, and atmosphere, and allow visuals to unfold across the space rather than from a single focal point. Playback will be handled through a laptop provided by the visual artist.

Lighting:
Lighting is an important atmospheric component of the work. The piece benefits from subtle, sculptural lighting states rather than dynamic cues. A basic wash with the ability to create gentle shifts in tone and intensity is sufficient, with opportunities for creative collaboration if additional lighting resources are available.

Set, Props, and Costumes:
The work does not require built set pieces or props other than projections surfaces which can be screens, walls, or curtains. Costumes are minimal and performance-oriented, allowing focus to remain on sound and the animated projections.

PRESS & REVIEWS

“ … an exceptional new album — the music is raw, honest, poignant, soothing, and vulnerable” — DIGITAL JOURNAL

“a highly intimate, spiritual place … pulling us deep into the undertow of memory … a triumph” — MAGNETIC MAGAZINE

“ … the Therapeutic Power of Music … Carla Patullo has never shied away from exploring, testing and pushing the parameters of musical expression in terms of both instrumentation and the emotions she conveys. A GRAMMY-winning artist, composer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, Patullo has released an accomplished body of work that ranges from the minimalist to the orchestral, the classical to the unconventional and the abstract to the deeply personal. . . . This stirring collection of music explores Patullo’s complex emotions with regards to her late mother, who passed away, years ago, in a tragic car accident. The album is the sound of Patullo’s quest, connection, and ultimately, healing and inner peace… ” — BMI Music

“… a breathtaking new album NOMADICA … makes its eagerly-anticipated debut … as one of the very best LP releases of 2025” – Vents Magazine

“an epic new offering … Patullo's latest is a rich, orchestral journey through tribulation and recovery, expressed through luscious orchestrations of swelling strings, dreamy keys, and thoughtful electronic flourishes.”
— EARMILK

“Go Away with Carla Patullo” — Interview with Jae-Ha Kim in The Chicago Tribune

PHOTO GALLERY

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