I am excited to tell you about a performance that I’m giving on 12th July 2025, Suffolk, UK.
Join me for UNAMPLIFIED LAND – an intimate completely acoustic solo performance in Saxmundham Market Hall as I play semi-improvised music inspired by the landscape and drenched in colour.
I am performing at the end of the preview day of The Art Station’s Summer Exhibition LAND: A bold and expansive group exhibition showcasing the work of 27 contemporary artists, each engaging with the dynamic and often complex relationship between humans and the natural world.
This is where it all began! just me, my instruments, a magical building and YOU.
(For London folk – hop on the train from Liverpool Street and change at Ipswich heading for the Saxmundham the venue is a minute from the station. Come earlier and see the exhibition).
LYRELYRELYRE is the 11th solo album from Laura Cannell, the UK based Composer, Performer and Improviser. Cannell calls upon an ancient Lyre that was buried in the epic landscape of the Suffolk Coastline to sound once more. She wakes it from its 14 century long slumber and coaxes it’s shrouded sounds onto her new offering.
Cannell delves deep into the history of the lyre, finding a way to bring this ancient instrument back into the landscape it once lived in and into her fold of feral chamber music. The Lyre lives again alongside haunting bass recorders and double reeded battle cries of the crumhorn.
Around fourteen hundred years ago, fragments of a six string lyre made from maplewood, gold and garnet stones was hidden in a ship and buried on dry land. There it remained until 1939 when it was unearthed from the burial mound above the sea meadows. The Sutton Hoo Lyre is one of the most iconic ancient instruments ever found, is thought to be the property and resting place of an Anglo-Saxon King.
LYRELYRELYRE is a journey into buried memories and unequal temperaments. It conjures the long dormant spirits and sounds of the people who played this instrument in mead halls and by fires in pre-christian England. A true ancestral sound, we can hear the timbre and textures of an instrument buried with royalty. It was used as an accompaniment to life, a way to pass on news of joy and anguish, a sound which represented and conjured human sorrows and deepest desires.
“This album is an offering to a history we were supposed to remember, but somewhere between the centuries it was lost deep in our collective folk memory, we forgot… The ship burial was supposed to be a beacon in the landscape. We were meant to remember who was there, but instead it slipped away as we farmed the land and cut trenches through the earth for our wars. All the time oblivious to a thread which was in front of us, a relic of pagan times, a true sound and link to the past. There has been much made of the other buried treasures, the Sutton Hoo helmet, the golden treasures, the shield and the ship but the lyre has a visceral connection. A physicality and a sound, a language and a feeling that enables us to truly feel connected to our predecessors when we strike the strings”. (Laura Cannell March 2025)
“Having just completed her incredible 12-month, 12-EP series A Year of Lore, Laura Cannell has immediately launched into a new series. A Compendium of Beasts, described as “a Medieval Bestiary in Sound,” begins with a tribute to four different beasts…. The music is sublime, but the fun is the identification: which creatures are real, which are imaginary, and which have been classified as imaginary but may in fact be real?“ Review from ‘A Closer Listen’ 30th January 2025
A Compendium of Beasts – Volume 1 is a modern day Medieval Bestiary in sound. Composed, performed and produced by internationally acclaimed musician and composer Laura Cannell. It’s the first in a series of EPs created to search for strength and solidarity in the world of real and imagined beasts.
A Compendium of BEASTS Vol. 1 released January 31, 2025
Cannell’s ‘Beasts’ series opens the door on a new chapter in which she is searching for meaning amidst chaos. She embraces her feral medieval and improvisatory roots through her instruments as she plays a game of catch and release to explore the minds of these mythical and real animals. Volume 1 features 4 tracks which include the mythical Norfolk puma and the bittern who booms across the marshes.
For centuries people have looked to animals for answers and inspiration. Both animals and instruments communicate so much yet never speak, they are otherworldly, sharing with us the same air, the same space, but they are never truly of the same world as us.
This series follows on from her epic year in 2024 which included a monthly EP series ‘A Year of Lore’ and her high hitting 10th solo album ‘The Rituals of Hildegard Reimagined’, as well as a duo release with Seattle based Cellist Lori Goldston, All of which garnered much attention from BBC Radio 3, 4 and 6Music among others.
“In A Compendium of Beasts – Volume 1, I have welcomed some of the animals I know best, The Bittern who booms across the marshes, The Bridd Hremm (or Crow Chick in Old English), The Norfolk Puma – who has been a presence in our family, never seen but in the corner of a field or an eye it could be there, there is field in particular that I believe it lives and The Fox Taegl – I have a deeply embedded memory from a very young age of a bushy tail disappearing into a hedge.”
A Compendium of BEASTS Vol. 2 released March 7, 2025
1. Phoenix Quartet A violin quartet written for the legendary immortal bird that regenerates and lives over and over again symbolising good fortune and transformation.
2. Beneath the Tulpars Wings and Hooves A supernaturally fast horse is represented here on overbowed violin, it is said that a boy was grieving his horse and the horse appeared to him in a dream and taught him how to make a fiddle from the bones and hairs of the horse, (a magical violin origin story).
3. The Otter Swims at Night Nocturnal watery chords repeat in the track, with intertwining recorder resonating through the dark Waveney Valley waterways where otters were successfully reintroduced into the wild Wetlands of East Anglia.
4. Feathered Serpent A biting rough fiddle sound accompanies the half flight of The Feathered Serpent. It is said to represent the space between the sky and the underworld. It has the features of both a bird and a snake with a plumed back.
“Laura Cannell’s latest serialised project is a monumental achievement sure to captivate the latent folklorist in all of us, says Bernie Brooks” The Quietus READ the FULL REVIEW HERE
LAURA CANNELL Composer | Performer 