Two-time Grammy–winning composer Carla Patullo is in the rare position of watching the same record open up twice. Last year Nomadica introduced itself as a dense, grief-struck collage for strings, choir, and voice, written in memory of her mother. Shortly after it picked up the Grammy for Best New Age, Ambient, or Chant Album, she is pulling its final track, “Fly Under,” into the spotlight on its own, framing it less as epilogue and more as a clear entry point into the project.
“Fly Under” is co-written and performed with Martha Wainwright, and you can hear why it became the closer. It starts small: soft guitar phrases, a thick atmospheric pad, and a deep bass line holding everything in place. Patullo’s vocal comes in right away, strong and close. The song opens out slowly from there. Strings arrive in the background and keep inching forward, while the piano stays high and sparse, dropping bright notes that cut through the arrangement.
Wainwright’s presence shifts the track from inner monologue to exchange. Patullo and Wainwright share the foreground; the tension sits between their voices and the orchestral bed underneath. Across Nomadica you hear the choir Tonality and the Scorchio Quartet pull Patullo’s writing toward chamber music and ambient work at the same time. “Fly Under” keeps that balance but pushes the song form further forward, so the emotional hit lands even if you come in cold without the rest of the album.
As a single, the track plays like one long rise. The early section stays low and weighted, then the strings grow brighter and louder, building into a final stretch where harmony, volume, and vibrato all lean upward. Patullo has talked about imagining conversations with her mother that never happened; you can feel that here in the way the music refuses to resolve too neatly.
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