Seated in a humble but delightful Mexican cafe on San Pablo and University Avenue in Berkeley, I begin to write about the coming of my album release, and why it’s named A Larger Dance. I should let you know that I write the songs I most need to hear; I don’t do this consciously of course, but I find it to be so when I hear over and over my own voice singing to me, reminding me. 

Why A Larger Dance? 

Why, when the world seems to be turning itself over so fast it’s hard to stay on top from one day to the next? I confess: I’m a songwriter that went to seminary just before I became a songwriter, just before I knew I could even write songs. I was always seeking meaning, even as a child. Somehow, I feel called to marry meaning and music in songs that address the times that we are in, and my experience of being alive now, hoping that you too can share in my experiences along with your own.  

A Higher Purpose

I have come to believe that everything happens as it does for a higher purpose that we can only come to see by living it. Life is real, and yet it is also an illusion. What is Real is what guides the dance that is our lives, taken individually, taken as a family, a city, a community, a nation, a globe.  The song says, “I know what the world thinks, that it’s all a matter of chance, but the world, and all that happens, is part of a larger dance.” 

A Larger Dance is

A Larger Dance is the dance of all of our lives; it is the dance of the larger cosmos, the dance of you and I,  in which we play a part we don’t yet fully comprehend, but which is the reason for our existence. It is the dance of faith, that we are where we need to be, in the bodies that need to be ours, with the people that we need to meet, with the friends we have lost and found. It is the dance of the meeting of the good and the shadow both in ourselves, and with the other; both in the world and within us. It is the profound faith that there is, after all, a great Good that loves us. And that everything important happens in our lives just as it must.  

Thank you for letting me share my music with you.

On November 1, Kate Magdalena is coming out with her second full length album, A Larger Dance, produced by GRAMMY-nominated-producer Billy Smiley (Johnny Cash, Whiteheart, Clay Aiken, and the Newsboys). The album features some of Nashville’s finest musicians with Fred Eltringham (The Wallflowers and Sheryl Crow), Byron House (Robert Plant and the Band of Joy), Blair Masters (Garth Brooks) and Brennan Smiley (The Technicolors).  The album is mostly original, and also includes covers by Sinead O’Connor (“Take Me to Church”), CS&N (“Southern Cross”), and Joan Armatrading (“Dry Land”), and will be available on all digital platforms November 1.

PREORDER the album today and receive immediately receive 3 downloads “Dry Land”, “Southern Cross”, and “Long Live the Woods”.