Piano and voice, twinned conduits for the depths and riches of human expression, here offer streams of compassion, desperation, defiance, and renewal for the listener’s consideration. There is a sparkling determination that spangles each song of Mare Berger’s Dreaming Blue like dew on summer leaves.

Coming off of Dreaming Blue is “Where I’m Bound To Go,” released today.  Starting off with a heavenly cascade of birds chirping Berger emerges with a softness and delicate touch to the proceedings.  “This song began in a moment of grasping and obsessing — I was unwilling to let someone go. I walked around the lake in Prospect Park until with time I let my grief soften into my body. I realized it was water that would teach me the lesson of surrendering to change — that I could imagine myself shifting into rain, into lake, into ice, into river, into sky, to help myself get in touch with the constantly changing undercurrent of life,” says Berger.

Like Joni Mitchell, an artist famed for composing melodically unusual, folk- and jazz-inflected pieces that lay bare and ruthlessly confront the artist’s, the lover’s, the woman’s fears themselves–fears of loneliness, of heartbreak, of emotional desolation and directionlessness–Berger takes her listeners by both hands and implores them to witness the undulating pangs of her simultaneous return-to-self and rebirth.

Accompanied in bursts throughout by musicians such as cellist Rachel Gawell Burns, bassist Shayna Dulberger, drummer Jason Nazary, and pedal steel player Myk Freeman (not to mention many others,)  Berger–a long-celebrated, Brooklyn-based pianist who can here be found mapping the contours of her abilities as vocalist and songwriter–has created a testament to and a healing balm for the grief of a failed relationship.

Despite such an experience bordering on the truly universal, not all who navigate it are able to conjure a properly relatable, compelling, and sonically varied depiction of the journey. As for Berger, however, her honesty is unvarnished, and her delivery is deft and truly interesting–there is no fear of misunderstanding or being unable to follow her along her path.

Dreaming Blue is thoroughly infused with natural imagery, both unforgiving and lush, full of rushing and sometimes crashing bodies of water, and the dubious stillness of fungal groves; it is peppered with memories of the banal and sublime; it contains the soft cries of insects and the wounded soul alike.

The landscape is varied and by turns treacherous, hushed, vast, and winding, and there is no moment where the guide is not vulnerable. In the final moments of one’s time spent with her music, however, she lays hand to shoulder, placid and steady-gazed, and with a whispering hum, nods her head with sureness to the open road ahead.