Awarded Folk Album of the Month in the Guardian in August 2019, Sing as the Crow Flies is the debut vocal album by composer/performers Laura Cannell and Polly Wright. Laura and Polly will perform a selection of songs from the album, which was created through a process of spontaneous vocal improvisation - a reaction to the formal training and institutions of their parallel early classical backgrounds. As the Guardian says, Sing as the Crow Flies wrenches the listener ‘far away from modern life to something in touch with the older, stranger marrow of ourselves’.
Laura Cannell
Straddling the worlds of experimental, chamber, folk, early & medieval music, Laura’s semi-composed, semi-improvised compositions draw on the emotional influences of the landscape and explore the spaces between early and experimental music that is rooted in but not tethered to the past. Cannell is an artist whose original and singular vision sets her apart from her contemporaries, whilst her music exists as a culturally vital exploration of the link between medieval, traditional and modern musical idioms.
Laura has released five solo albums since 2014, successfully carving out a unique path with her work, receiving critical acclaim from the contemporary music press and regularly being included in numerous Album of the Year lists (including The Guardian, MOJO, BBC Radio 3’s Late Junction, The Wire and The Quietus). Recent projects include creating music for film (EMI & more), broadcast work for BBC Radio 3, “Reckonings” (2018) a duo album with Andre Bosman, tours with the cellist Lori Goldston (Earth, Nirvana) & collaborations with This Heat drummer Charles Hayward & Mira Calix, as well as commissions for Hampton Court Palace, The Immix Ensemble at Tate Liverpool, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra & The Zuckerman Museum of Contemporary Art (US). As well as numerous live performances in the UK & Europe.
www.lauracannell.co.uk
Polly Wright
Polly Wright is a Musician whose work bleeds into Performance, Installation, Film, and Written Word. Using voice, pianos and organs, music boxes, slide guitar, various orchestral instruments and fragments from long forgotten records, she has created music for theatre, installation, poetry and dance and performed headline sold out shows at The National Portrait Gallery, Hoxton Music Hall and Saint Leonard’s Church in Shoreditch. She has composed music for poet Luke Wright, sung on the catwalk for Designer Orla Kiely at London Fashion Week, performed for Secret Cinema’s Grand Eagle Hotel for Laura Marling, written Country and Western music for Artist Stuart Pearson Wright and composed and performed in Director Shelly Love’s short ‘Betwixt and Between’ for Sadler’s Wells.