Laura Cannell
Brawl Records presents Laura Cannell + Charlotte Jolly
Laura Cannell is an internationally acclaimed composer and performer from East Anglia. Her music straddles the worlds of contemporary and ancient music, it is semi-composed, semi-improvised and draws on the emotional influences of the landscape whilst exploring the spaces between early and experimental music. She has released eight solo albums to critical acclaim, mainly performing on Overbowed Violin and Double Recorders. Recent EPs have also seen her recording on church organs and with vocals.
She has toured throughout the UK & Europe and is regularly broadcast on BBC Radio 3 and BBC 6Music. Performances include Deep Minimalism at Queen Elizabeth Hall, solo at King’s Place, touring & recording with cellist Lori Goldston (Nirvana, Earth), performing solo at The Barbican and collaborating with with writer/comedian Stewart Lee on the album These Feral Lands Vol 1.
Laura returns to Norwich Arts Centre to perform music from her 2024monthly release series, ‘A Year of Lore’ and her latest solo album ‘The Rituals of Hildegard Reimagined’ taking inspiration from the 12th century composer, nun, herbalist and mystic Hildegard von Bingen. Throughout 2024 Laura has embarked on a project under the heading of “A Year of Lore”, writing, recording and producing an EP of new music every month exploring real and imagined Lore such as Sealore, Earthlore, Riverlore and Mountainlore these have been broadcast on BBC 6Music and Radio 3.
In May 2024 Laura was an Artist in Residence at the Norfolk and Norwich Festival which included performing solo in Norwich Cathedral, a new Line-up of her Modern Ritual curated night and more.
Commissions have included: Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, Cheltenham Music Festival, Historic Royal Palaces sound installations both solo and with Mira Calix. She is regularly broadcast on the BBC, including live in concert and making playlists for Late Junction Mixtape, BBC 6Music and the World Service. She has also recorded a Maida Vale Session with harpist Rhodri Davies and music is regularly used for film & television (inc. BBC 2’s What We do in the Shadows) internationally and on the catwalks at Paris and London Fashion Weeks.
In 2020 she appeared on the BBC Radio 4 Documentary Life, Death and The Foghorn with Jennifer Lucy Allan, and curated and toured her Modern Ritual Series throughout the UK 2017 – 2018. She has performed solo extensively in Europe and has been featured in The Irish Times with Kate Ellis, The FT, The Guardian, The Quietus, and The Wire Magazine (Aug 2022). Other highlights include performing at Flow Festival (Helsinki), Fano Free Folk Festival in Denmark, Le Guess Who? In Holland, Unsound in Poland and many others.
The raw beauty of her melodies glimmer through prickly thickets of stark and dissonant chordal drones” THE WIRE
“this music feels ancient, it also feels brutally alive, as if a giant was waking from long slumbers, about to make its way in the world” THE GUARDIAN
“an essential work of modern British folk and avant-garde composition.” THE QUIETUS
Charlotte Jolly
A clarinettist and composer who creates work for solo clarinet performances. She uses virtuosic semi-improvised minimalist cycles and patterns to evoke spacious skies, the sweeping flight of birds and the fluctuations of dancing trees in the wind. Charlotte draws on the sometimes mournful and intense beauty of the natural world with a new expressive exploration of the landscape. Aliveness and mortality are integral themes of her music.
