RIVERLORE is the third release in the new ‘Year of Lore’ series of 12 EPs by internationally acclaimed composer and performer Laura Cannell. Every month throughout 2024, Laura creates a new release of music to reflect real and imagined ‘Lores’.

The RIVERLORE EP holds a trio of songs which take inspiration from river banks, old work horses - when the plough was still the master, and gives the visceral feeling of air bubbling up from a watery underworld beneath the calm surface.

The violin and bass recorder echo around the river bends, disappearing in the air across flatlands, with nothing in their path except eel grass and reeds, they resonate on and on, until they get to the harbour mouth. Cannell takes anecdotes and proverbs from 18th century folklore collections, the magic of plantlore and through her music imagines and brings to life the ghosts of marsh ponies who still roam the soft watery meadows and banks.

TRACK LISTING

1. ON HOLLOW HEELS - Bass Recorder, Drum, Voice, Violin

The horses tread on the grassy banks on hollow heels.

They tread the grassy banks

We watch them go, on hollow heels

We take their shoes beneath the waves

Their trails of iron left in mud

2. THE SIRENS OF RIVERLORE - Octave Violin, Recorder & Voice

Low arpeggios on a riverbed of octave violin evoke the sirens call. Wordless they drift from stream to brook to broad, through the new cut, never still, always moving like a rolling sea mist. Sound fills every space but turns and leaves almost as soon as it arrives.

3. WE TURN OURSELVES AROUND FOR YOU - Overbowed Violin

We turn ourselves around for you. Only for love.

The tide and draw of water, through channels and rivers has long been a metaphor for life. The unavoidable ebb and flow of the human condition. The many branches and paths that connect and disconnect us. We don’t know where they all lead but we instinctually keep going. Love is the thing that makes us put in the hard work, the strength we need can be found on the river bank.

ABOUT THE THE SERIES

Riverlore follows Earthlore (February) and Sealore (January).

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.

The music in RIVERLORE 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 instruments of overbowed violin and an array of recorders from soprano to great bass are complimented with the addition of octave violin and ‘cello, and voice tapping into deeper resonances.

Following the release of her latest solo album ‘Midwinter Processionals’ in December 2023 Laura has recently appeared as a guest on BBC Radio 3’s ‘This Classical Life’, she was featured on BBC Radio 6Music’s Scene Sounds, was a guest on the popular folklore podcast ‘Folklands’. One of her compositions ‘The Gatherers’ was re-imagined and performed in a sold out performance at the London Coliseum in a concert curated by broadcaster Elizabeth Alker (BBC Radio 3) and the composer Max Richter. This month also saw the World Premiere of a new commission written for The Marian Consort - 8 part vocal ensemble called “For the Plants that Bind Us”. For a full biography please visit www.lauracannell.com