Welcome to A Year of Lore, TODAY is the release of SEALORE by Laura Cannell no. 1 of 12 Limited Edition signed & numbered CD (100) + DL. SEALORE takes the listener under the sea to the disappeared world of Doggerland. A place which was once covered in a thick layer of ice where people would hunt and forage in the centuries before the ice gradually melted to become the North Sea.

The 4 tracks on SEALORE soundtrack an imagined film, a family, with a daughter, a wild girl who whittles her practice harpoons out of wood and then deer antlers.
The girl, visits us throughout the LORE series, flitting between the two worlds, the ancient land beneath the sea and the world we now live in, the sounds she heard in her stone age childhood are voiced by the layered wood, air, and tensioned strings of violins, cello and recorders all written and performed by Laura.

The music in SEALORE was created with Cannell’s signature yet unplaceable sounds, also flitting between two worlds, her transient music often evokes both the ancient and the contemporary. In the ‘Lore’ series, her signature instruments of overbowed violin and an array of recorders from soprano to great bass are complimented with the addition of octave violin and ‘cello, tapping into deeper resonances. The stories of people and places seem to find their way in to Cannell’s music, so she leans further in to draw them out of the earth, the sea and the landscape and to give a voice to the uncanny and the unseen.

It’s been a busy time in the land of talking, in December I was featured on a couple of excellent BBC Radio shows and I had the pleasure of giving a live talk/podcast recording for The Norfolk Folklore Society in Norwich, and joining the wonderful actor/writers Tim Downie and Just Chubb for their Folklands podcast – Witch Country Part 2.

All the links are below so you can listen at your leisure.

BBC Radio 3 – This Classical Life with Jess Gillam – LISTEN HERE

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BBC 6Music – New Music Fix – Scene Spotlight on Brawl Records – LISTEN HERE

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Folklands Podcast – WITCH COUNTRY Part 2 – LISTEN HERE
Tim Downie and Justin Chubb with guest Laura Cannell

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Norfolk Folklore Society Podcast – Live from The Louis Marchesi in Norwich – LISTEN HERE

It’s Release Day! My new solo album MIDWINTER PROCESSIONALS is OUT NOW!

“The seasonal soundtrack we’ve been craving, ‘Midwinter Processionals’ is another studied mélange of ancient and hypermodern sounds from the peerless Laura Cannell” Boomkat Review

“Internationally acclaimed musician Laura Cannell releases a 30 minute Overbow Violin recording inspired by the 1000 year long composition Longplayer by Jem Finer (Artist, Composer and one of the founders of The Pogues). BOW & CREAK was recorded in a single take at Cannell’s Suffolk studio and the name was inspired by the corner of the Thames where the snaking tidal river meets one of London’s oldest navigational waterways in the country, Bow Creek, this is where Finer’s Longplayer has been installed since 31 December 1999, playing without repetition. 

Cannell used a snapshot of Finer’s ever changing Longplayer score to create a longform violin track. Circular bowing motions on her violin are made with a deconstructed bass viol bow to play polyphonic chords, and improvised melodic passages are re-iterated with asymmetric repetitions which are combined with ancient tune fragments and the ghosts medieval and renaissance ornamentation. Captivated by the upturned bell sounds of the Longplayer singing bowls, Cannell used fragments of structure, fragments of note shapes and the circulatory image of Jem Finer’s original score to create a mini violin response to Longplayer.”