'Feathers'
From a live webcast performance at The Norwich Gallery
Performers:Liam Wells (Video & live electronics), Andre Bosman (bass guitar) & Laura Cannell (recorder & Harshhash) harshhash by Shigeto Wada copyright 2004.
Click here for a live recording of feathers made in the Norwich Gallery Sept 2005
In November 2004 Laura was awarded an Arts Council of England Grant to support her studies and development of repertoire for improvised recorder and laptop. She has performed at the Sonic Arts Network Conference at the University of Leicester, the Dublin Conservatoire at the Dublin Institute of Technology and the Encompass Festival - Experimental Electroacoustic Performance, at The Old Truman Brewery in London. The project culminated in a live performance and recording at the end of 2005.
The idea behind the repertoire is to combine improvised late medieval divisions with real-time computer feedback therefore using both her skills as a recorder player and new technology. So far Laura is using two programs written by Shigeto Wada, Composer and Lecturer at DIT in Ireland. (thanks Shigeto!)
Ganassi
Listen to 'Ganassi' - From a live performance with Andre Bosman on 3rd October 2005 at The University of East Anglia Concert Room - 'Circuits of Malpractice' concert.
Feathers
Audio analysis of acoustic & electronic sounds created by Bosman & Cannell effect the composition of the video output (falling feathers), in turn effecting electronic sounds generated by mapping the movement in the video screen.
As the three performers work together in a chain, building layers of imagery & sound in response to each others output, a complex aesthetic relationship builds in ebbs, flows & interruptions as video movement is followed by corresponding electronic sounds created by both computer-generated & processed human interventions.
Liam Wells (Video & live electronics), Andre Bosman (bass guitar) & Laura Cannell (recorder & Harshhash) harshhash by Shigeto Wada copyright 2004.
Performed 03.10.05
with Andre Bosman & Liam Wells at The University of East Anglia Concert Room - 'Circuits of Malpractice' concert.
EARLY MUSIC
Some of my early musical influences were playing renaissance choral music in recorder consorts and I am now returning to this music, with its rich dramatic polyphony, how can it be left alone? Also on the agenda, early Italian recorder sonatas, by the likes of Uccellini, Notari et al. Watch this space for a CD at the end of the year.
RECITAL PROGRAMMES:
Italian Fantasy
Performers:
Laura Cannell - Recorders
Stephen Rose - Harpsichord
18th Century Music of Madness and Dance
Performers:
Laura Cannell - Recorders
Tabitha Tuckett - Baroque Cello
Recorder Fabula
Performers:
Laura Cannell - Recorders
William Fergusson - Piano
The Dolmetsch Years
Performers:
Laura Cannell - Recorders
Ross Winters - Piano
Norfolk Baroque - Chamber music for recorders & continuo
Performers:
Laura Cannell - Recorders
Joanna Baldwin - Recorders
Gwen Musker - Recorders
Ross Winters - Recorder
Clare Sutherland - Harpsichord
Tabitha Tuckett - Baroque Cello
(Laura formed Norfolk Baroque in 2004)
Concertos include:
•Vivaldi's La Notte with The Bretton Hall String Orchestra
•Sammartini's Concerto in F Major with The LCMM Baroque Ensemble
•Telemann's Concerto in A minor with The Castley Sinfonia
•Arnold's Concerto for Recorder & Orchestra with UEA Symphony Orchestra
Recorder Magazine Article published 2005
New Music and New Performing Environments; Developing new repertoire for the Recorder By Laura Cannell
Have you ever wondered what it would be like to perform a duet with a computer? How about performing away from the concert hall in a billowing tented room inside a London club?
These are just two of the things which have happened during a project I have just completed focusing on developing new repertoire for the recorder. The following article is intended to give an overview of a project I have explored over the last year. In November 2004 I received a letter saying that my proposal for a project to research and develop new repertoire for the recorder had been accepted and that the Arts Council of England would fund it. What follows is a description of my activities, some of my discoveries and the process of trying to develop a new idea. As a recorder player myself I wanted to develop a kind of music which would represent my interest in late medieval divisions and in contemporary improvised music. I was feeling a bit directionless in terms of repertoire following my Mmus and so decided to embark upon creating something new to challenge the way I play and my views towards performing environments.
A short background, I am a recorder and fiddle player from Norfolk, born in 1978. At the age of eighteen I went to college, left, went on tour with a folk band to Canada, came back recorded an album and went back to college…. I studied at London College of Music & Media where I graduated with a BMus 1st class honours (Performance) in 2001 and was elected as a Woodwind Fellow, this was followed by lots of performing and then I studied for an MMus (Performance Studies) at the UEA in Norwich which I passed in 2003. I have studied recorder with Margaret Westlake, Piers Adams (briefly at LCMM), Ross Winters and Philip Thorby (Currently). I am in a trio called ‘Horses Brawl’ who perform traditional and medieval music with contemporary techniques, we have just released our first album and have had airplay on BBC Radio 3 and performed widely at festivals in the UK.
I made an application because a project had developed in my mind to create some new repertoire for myself. The initial idea was to use techniques and ideas which had been developing during my MMus in Performance Studies at the University of East Anglia (UEA), Although my masters was very much focused on standard recorder repertoire (Malcolm Arnold’s Concerto for Recorder & Orchestra and Vivaldi’s Sopranino Concerto), I found myself becoming increasingly interested in the other postgraduate studies in the School of Music. There is a strong electro-acoustic composer/performer community at UEA, so I began to attend the lectures, concerts and seminars.
My interest in Electro-acoustic music and sonic arts had been nurtured and I began wondering what would happen if I could develop a style of playing which would iincorporate both my recorder training at London College of Music and Media and my masters. Much of the research at UEA is about the development of new instruments and of a way to perform with them. So I took my instrument and began to experiment with how I could perform with it in a new way.
I performed at a Sonic Arts Network conference with composers from the UEA in Leicester in Summer 2004, and received very positive responses. I performed a piece of improvised electro-acoustic music on treble recorder at a=415 and a laptop programme called fPeak (frequency peak) by Shigeto Wada, Lecturer in Music at Dublin Conservatoire. The programme was originally created for independent computers to communicate with each other, for example, Shigeto would set up 3 computers in different places in a performance space and fPeak would be on each computer and with the use of an internal microphone on each computer would make a sound which would then be picked up by another computer, in effect each computer begins to improvise and react depending on the sound it receives from the other sound sources.
It was daunting getting up in front of a room full of people who specialise in electro-acoustic music and sonic arts, I felt very out of place amongst the 10 or so laptops, manipulated instruments strung from top to bottom with sensors and contact microphones, but I had gone to perform so I stood up.
This marked the beginning for me of pushing my playing to it’s limits, if you perform for example Malcolm Arnold’s Concerto for recorder and orchestra, you have a completely different job to perform. The preparation, practice and technical excercises are so consuming that when you come to do a performance you are as prepared as you can be, you pretty much know the shape of the performance and it is then down to the moment.
I began by studying the divisions of Ganassi with Philip Thorby.
Whereas if you purposely restrict the amount of practice you do and do not allow yourself to perform the same thing twice, then a whole new approach is needed.
Without the years of practising and performing it would not be possible for me to improvise as I think I would feel like a fraud, anyone (as we know) can pick up a recorder and make squeaky blowy sounds and call it ‘avant-garde’ but as with modern art the interesting part may be the background to piece and it may not be aesthetically pleasing, but there could be moments of interest if you look at it in a new way.
I’m not really sure what the general concensus of playing music on recorder and laptop is, I think that perhaps two years ago I couldn’t have imagined liking the idea let alone actually performing, writing and enjoying it! But now, I see it as a really interesting way of performing with a whole new potential.
It is important to set yourself boundaries in some senses, not necessarily in range or dynamic, it could be that you decide to use certain notes or extended techniques, or to develop just one theme but equally it is important to decide things about your environment, how you will let it affect your playing.
Two main pieces I have developed:
Feathers:
Instrumentation: bass guitar, recorder, video and live electronics (harshhash)
Artists: André Bosman, Laura Cannell & Liam Wells
Audio analysis of acoustic and electronic sounds created by Bosman and Cannell effect the composition of the video output (falling feathers), in turn effecting electronic sounds generated by mapping the movement in the video screen.
As the three performers work together in a chain, building layers of imagery and sound in response to each others' output, a complex aesthetic relationship builds in ebbs, flows and interruptions as video movement is followed by corresponding electronic sounds created by both computer-generated and processed human interventions.
And Ganassi:
Inspired by the treatise on recorder playing by Silvestro Ganassi published in Venice in 1535, this piece is based upon the endless bars of divisions, which he transcribed as a demonstration of how to perform any cadence. A division can be used to translate the meaning of a word. It has also been cited as a tool for composing by numbers. I take each bar as if it were a single note and then perform an improvised collection of 'notes'.
1. Live Performances related to this project
28th January Dublin Conservatoire, Ireland*
‘Sound Digout’ (Digital Output)
Performance with Liam Wells & Phil Archer
1st May Encompass Festival, The Vibe Bar, Brick lane, London
Performance with Andre Bosman, Liam Wells (n0media) & Tom Simmons (n0media)
3rd October University of East Anglia ‘Circuits of Malpractice’
29th October The Norwich Gallery – Webjam 09 – Live Webcast
*The recording of this concert has been chosen for the main showreel at VAIA (Video Art International D’Alcoi) festival in Spain on 12th November 2005
A year on and I have just completed my journal and report of the year’s activities. The final part of which is to produce a CD of works both live and studio recorded.
