From the first notes of Ortolan’s final EP it’s clear that songwriter Stephanie Trowbridge – Cottingham has come into her own. Her voice—at times both delicately piercing and soulfully soaring—creates heart-space, quieting the mess that is life. Casting lyrical ripples like clear drops in stock-still soul water. It is reflection, matured. Perspective, poetically captured, gained only through experience. There is no wasted energy or emotion in these five tracks, yet each folds-up their lyrical essence with definite fullness, infused with subtle beauty and grace.

Ortolan’s sound is refreshingly no-frills, yet full of delicate love rooted in the soil of experience. Both simple and timeless. Music raising it’s open hands in praise, embracing and celebrating the glory of life.

While this closes a chapter in what we know as Ortolan, it is also a beginning. The beginning of new life shared with another. The Ortolan seed going “down deep” into the earth. To sprout, eventually, into something new and prismatically beautiful.