Sunday 13 September 2015, 8pm
Laura Cannell celebrates the release of new album Beneath Swooping Talons, heading up a great string-laden triple bill alongside violinist – and OTO Associate Artist – Angharad Davies and cellist Oliver Coates. Exploring the space between ancient, improvised, traditional & experimental music, Laura Cannell's music is transcendent and otherworldly – balancing a rigorous understanding of (and fascination with) the past with a bracingly modern approach.
“Laura Cannell has a sonic aesthetic that seems to come from the depths of ancient English time. She improvises pieces using, mostly, recorder and fiddle, and several of these pieces are presented on Beneath Swooping Talons. Deep and powerful work here, all the more so for being recorded in single takes.” – Norman Records, review of Beneath Swooping Talons
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 seven 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.
Following a couple of years (from 2020) of collaborative releases, remote projects, and sound installations Laura returns to her solo work and throughout 2024 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. Alongside this project which includes signed limited edition CDs, Laura was recently co-commissioned by The Marian Consort and The Cheltenham Festival to compose and 8 part vocal composition called Plantlore: For the Plants that Bind Us. 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.
Laura has released seven solo albums, toured throughout the UK & Europe, and is regularly broadcast on the BBC. Performances include Deep Minimalism at Queen Elizabeth Hall, solo at King’s Place, touring & recording with cellist Lori Goldston (Nirvana, Earth), These Feral Lands Album (with writer/comedian Stewart Lee) and solo at The Barbican. Commissions have included: Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, 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. Laura’s music has been used for film & television 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.
Angharad Davies is a Welsh violinist based in London working with free-improvisation, compositions and performance.Her approach to sound involves attentive listening and exploring beyond the sonic confines of her instrument, her classical training and performance expectation.
Much of her work involves collaboration. She has long standing duos with Tisha Mukarji, Dominic Lash and Lina Lapelyte and plays with Common Objects, Cranc and Skogen. She has been involved in projects with Tarek Atui, Tony Conrad, Richard Dawson, Gwenno, Roberta Jean, Jack McNamara, Rie Nakajima, Tim Parkinson, Eliane Radigue, Georgia Ruth and J.G.Thirlwell.
Most of her records are released on Another Timbre but she also has releases on Absinth Records, Confrontrecords, Emanem, Potlatch and winds measure recordings.Her first orchestral piece was commissioned by LCMF in 2019.
Oliver Coates is a cellist, composer and producer based in London. He has performed solo shows in China, Russia, Brazil, Egypt and Australia, and made his New York debut at Le Poisson Rouge. He was the winner of the Royal Philharmonic Society Young Artist Award 2011 and is an Artist in Residence at the Southbank Centre. Two major commissions premiered in 2017: HELIOTONES, for girls' choir, flutes, cello and electronics, for Borealis Festival, and Shorelines, for string quartet and electronics, for Cryptic at Operadagen Rotterdam.
In 2016 Coates released a solo record, Upstepping, on PRAH, and a collaborative record, Remain Calm, with Mica Levi on Slip. He works closely with Levi, London Contemporary Orchestra, Elysia Crampton, Jonny Greenwood and the visual artist Lawrence Lek, for whom he has scored the award-winning video pieces Unreal Estate and QE3. He has conceived and programmed the Southbank Centre’s long-running Harmonic Series and its first DEEP∞MINIMALISM festival in 2016, which featured Pauline Oliveros’ last public Tuning Meditation.
