Laura Cannell - Midwinter Processionals (2023)

MIDWINTER PROCESSIONALS is the 8th solo album from the UK based Composer, Performer and Improviser Laura Cannell. It follows her highly acclaimed 2022 release Antiphony of the trees which was in the UK’s official Download Charts top 50 and was entirely created on recorders.

MIDWINTER PROCESSIONALS highlights a new element in Cannell’s sonic world and is performed on violin, overbowed violin, bass recorder, double recorders and synths; for the first time marrying up her love for big resonant spaces and accompanying herself with epic synths through drones, melodies and medieval harmonies.

The 7 tracks on Midwinter Processionals were recorded inside Norwich Cathedral in Norfolk, UK. The melodies were improvised on her violins and recorders before taking the recordings back to her studio in Suffolk. Standing in the centre of the Norwich Cathedral nave with the stone baffled sounds of the city outside, Laura had the 900 year old cathedral all to herself for 2 hours - just enough time to play out the ideas that had been swarming in her head and explore the immense sonorities which swirled up to the 69ft high ornate roof bosses where the beams and vaults of the ceiling meet.

“I wanted to capture the reverb from inside the cathedral and pair it with layers of synths which would evoke my imagined secular processions of midwinter. Alone in the Cathedral I stood slowly turning in the centre of the nave sending every breath and bow in different directions, the long tones bouncing off stained glass, stone walls or disappearing like a rolling sea mist through long isles and around the carved columns and into the transepts.

As with many of my recordings, I went into this without a fixed plan, to see how I felt in the moment. To play, and to trust that I have something to say and find out where the sound wants to go. Can I push through my conflicted feelings of the sacred with the epic and immensely beautiful spaces that exist because of the highly controlled doctrines that these buildings were built around. I have learned not to judge in the moment, but to push through, to keep playing and when I return home I will see what has emerged from my conversations with the space.

As the last of the autumn sun disappeared out of sight over Tombland, a darkness was cast across the centuries old stones that lay worn and marked from the thousands of processions that have taken place in the cathedral. I add my own procession, but it is for outside of this space. A procession to keep us moving forwards. I am not interested in going backwards, recreating the past or staying in one place. I want to make music that I can carry with me into new emotional landscapes and feelings.” Laura Cannell November 2023