CANNELL, LAURA - Quick Sparrows Over The Black Earth (Sealed) (CD)

Cannell's inimitable style shines through as she steals fragments and melodies from the 5th - 14th centuries. She embraces the lightness and dark and the dawn and dusk (Dagian & Duske) that exist in the spaces between medieval, traditional and contemporary music. Recorded in single takes in a small medieval church in rural Norfolk, the ten tracks feature atmospheric improvisations around tunes played on fiddle with a deconstructed bow (taken apart and wrapped around the violin) and double barrelled recorders (two played at once and based on medieval paintings and sculptures). Inspiration comes from the surrounding Norfolk marshes and broads as well as from traditional and medieval styles, textures and tones are explored in the rasping fiddle and dissonant double recorders.