Merry Seasonal Doo-Dahs!! Lots has happened since the last news, with the Brighton festival and Norden Farm Arts Centre gigs under our belts we set off down the road to the Granary studio in wee Toft Monks to record the new album ... a D.I.Y affair that saw us both playing and engineering.
We'd decided that the cavernous church sound - though having served us well on the last two albums - needed toning down. So back to the barn where we recorded our debut album.
We had a good couple of days recording and were listening back, but things were not quite hunky dory. Somehow what we had was not matching the sounds we'd imagined and the way we wanted this record to feel.
We left the sessions with a large question mark which has taken a few weeks and quite a lot of soul-searching to digest.... but, a plan has hatched which involves hitting the studio again in feb 2011 to begin again with a fresh approach, a few extra new tunes, and the possibility of (shock, horror!) Multi-tracking - courtesy of Mr John Vigar and his shiny studio.
Its always tricky trying to translate what happens live into a recording and we felt it was time to take off the restrictions we'd subconsciously placed on it and allow ourselves to use the studio as a creative space in order to realise our sound the way it is in our heads!
Soooooo, exciting times ahead. We'll keep you updated on progress and hope to have a launch at some point in 2011.
Meanwhile Laura has a very exciting (re-scheduled) Norwich gig with Handel-addicts 'The Brook Street Band' whose recent 'In Tune' session on radio 3 blew me away. Date tbc.
And I'm off on the bus for more adventures in Plovdiv, Bulgaria with my tamboura teacher Vladimir Vladimirov to soak up some sounds, tricks and ornaments and have some time just writing tunes.
Wishing you all the very bestest for 2011!!
Thursday, 30 December 2010
Merry Seasonal Doo-Dahs!
Wednesday, 3 November 2010
New Photos
We have new photos. This is our favourite, so I thought I'd put it here.Coming up we have a gig on Friday in Norwich at Wensum Lodge, then a lot of practising, then a gig at Norden Farm Arts Centre, then recording our new album, then designing and launching our new website, then mastering the album and designing the artwork, then sending it to the magical world of CD manufacturing, followed by a release date in late spring/early summer 2011. Should be good if it all goes in that order.
I forgot to write about the new tune book that Adrian and I are working on so you too can play like Horses Brawl. It will feature the original tunes that we have based some of our pieces on plus our arrangements.
Thursday, 28 October 2010
Bloomsbury & Brighton
The past week has seen us seriously cut down on the tea breaks (a mean feat) in order to get our fingers firmly round all the new material and dust down some oldies ready for the weekend's gigs at Bloomsbury Festival and Brighton Early Music Festival.
It also meant a new early morning regime for me, catching the train to get to Raveningham where Laura is now cosily shacked-up in a lovely country cottage. It involves 6 miles biking and one river-ferry crossing at Reedham! Some amazing sights have been seen though, and I get the weekly countryside dosage plus some new ferryman friends!
The two gigs couldn't have contrasted more. Bloomsbury was in a cold, damp, but beautifully leafy Russell Square where we shared the same stage as our friend Micheal Ormiston, an incredible Tuvan throat singer from north London, and some very sunny sounding African bands that people tapped frozen feet along to. Our contribution to the 'World Music' stage was kind of different, but we revel in not fitting-in anywhere! It was well received though, and you can't beat that special festival adrenaline rush of suddenly finding yourself on stage having not warmed-up with 5mins to plug in and go. Woa!!
Then, off to Brighton.
Walking into St. Bartholomew's church we were met with this incredible ghost-like fog of incense illuminated through a massive circular window above the entrance as we looked up, then up, then up some more. This is one TALL building! Apparently built to the dimensions of Noah's ark (or was that just the after-gig Hobgoblin ale talking?) you could easily host some giraffe acrobatics in this place.
However it was just us, and some not particularly loud instruments - an initially slightly daunting prospect, coupled with the fact that this was the debut of the Brawkestra line-up, 8 musicians in total, with whom we'd never shared a stage before!
However, once everything was set we started getting used to and enjoying the cavernous sound, and even started tweaking some arrangements to use it to its full. One quartet piece (me, Laura, Jim O'toole and Alexsis Bennett) has a build-up to a 4-beat stop which was extended to an 'at Laura's pleasure' stop! It was a real joy to hear the last notes literally fly around the church before we crashed in again.
The gongs were firm favourites, and I had the pleasure of ending the whole concert in a three-some with them, all of us bowing and hitting our respective instruments as everyone else processed off the stage into the sonic ether and left us to what could only be described as a pulsating screeching eerie-ness!! What a way to go!
It had been a lot of work to organise, but it was totally worth every minute, we all had a great time and got some really heart-felt comments from people afterwards. It's the best thing after working away locked up in a room in a musical bubble to then open-out and share it with people and find common ground, especially in such an amazing space.
Sooooooo, onwards. Just the small matter of an album to make and a spring/summer tour to organise! Ooh, and watch out for some new photos of us prancing around on a cold Raveningham day with our friend the very talented mr Dougal Waters at the camera.
It also meant a new early morning regime for me, catching the train to get to Raveningham where Laura is now cosily shacked-up in a lovely country cottage. It involves 6 miles biking and one river-ferry crossing at Reedham! Some amazing sights have been seen though, and I get the weekly countryside dosage plus some new ferryman friends!
The two gigs couldn't have contrasted more. Bloomsbury was in a cold, damp, but beautifully leafy Russell Square where we shared the same stage as our friend Micheal Ormiston, an incredible Tuvan throat singer from north London, and some very sunny sounding African bands that people tapped frozen feet along to. Our contribution to the 'World Music' stage was kind of different, but we revel in not fitting-in anywhere! It was well received though, and you can't beat that special festival adrenaline rush of suddenly finding yourself on stage having not warmed-up with 5mins to plug in and go. Woa!!
Then, off to Brighton.
Walking into St. Bartholomew's church we were met with this incredible ghost-like fog of incense illuminated through a massive circular window above the entrance as we looked up, then up, then up some more. This is one TALL building! Apparently built to the dimensions of Noah's ark (or was that just the after-gig Hobgoblin ale talking?) you could easily host some giraffe acrobatics in this place.
However it was just us, and some not particularly loud instruments - an initially slightly daunting prospect, coupled with the fact that this was the debut of the Brawkestra line-up, 8 musicians in total, with whom we'd never shared a stage before!
However, once everything was set we started getting used to and enjoying the cavernous sound, and even started tweaking some arrangements to use it to its full. One quartet piece (me, Laura, Jim O'toole and Alexsis Bennett) has a build-up to a 4-beat stop which was extended to an 'at Laura's pleasure' stop! It was a real joy to hear the last notes literally fly around the church before we crashed in again.
The gongs were firm favourites, and I had the pleasure of ending the whole concert in a three-some with them, all of us bowing and hitting our respective instruments as everyone else processed off the stage into the sonic ether and left us to what could only be described as a pulsating screeching eerie-ness!! What a way to go!
It had been a lot of work to organise, but it was totally worth every minute, we all had a great time and got some really heart-felt comments from people afterwards. It's the best thing after working away locked up in a room in a musical bubble to then open-out and share it with people and find common ground, especially in such an amazing space.
Sooooooo, onwards. Just the small matter of an album to make and a spring/summer tour to organise! Ooh, and watch out for some new photos of us prancing around on a cold Raveningham day with our friend the very talented mr Dougal Waters at the camera.
Posted By Adrian
Sunday, 10 October 2010
Brighton Early Music Festival
HORSES BRAWL EXTENDED LINE-UP
24th October http://www.bremf.org.uk
So the Brighton early music festival gig is fast approaching and its an exciting time for us as we're venturing into a new project that has its debut at St. Bart's.
The story of the project goes back to spring this year when our idea of an extended line-up became reality with the news that the arts council grant we'd applied for was 'in the bag'. Brilliant news!!! .... But now we had to make it happen.
Because of the nature of the way we work - magpie-ing tunes from all over europe whether folk, medieval, renaissance or baroque, borrowing phrases, repeating fragments, changing notes, playing two tunes on top of each other to create new 'pieces' - everything develops out of improvisation. There is no score, no defined orchestration, so it all had to be dreamed-up.
The original idea that was pitched to BREMF was a 7-piece line-up that would consist of lots of medieval fiddles and an extra guitar. A few brainstorms later and we'd arrived at (quite literally!) a paired-down version, with me and Laura (Horses Brawl) and Arngeir Hauksson and Rebecca Austin-Brown of the Bardos Band on guitar/lute and recorder/medieval fiddle respectively.
The idea was that both mine and laura's instruments had a double, and with some effective arrangement we could achieve a much more expansive sound with only two extra players.
This line-up was then duly sent to BREMF to go in the festival programme ......
But things are never quite that simple!!
We were still hearing other sounds in our heads. Maybe we were just going mad? Or maybe we needed all those fiddles after all.
We wanted a snappy, powerful and concise sound. But we also wanted to explore some sonic landscapes, timbres and textural effects that weren't quite possible with the quartet.
Cue Alexis Bennett (The Early Music Experiment, Dufay Collective) and Jim O'toole (Joglaresa, La Serenissima, English Touring Opera). Both fiddlers have wide experience playing early, folk and contemporary classical music, and were up for jumping on board and delving into some sonic experiments with us.
So, a 6-piece was born, and we were getting closer to realising the sounds in our head ... except we didn't feel they were satiated just yet ... Cue the gongs!
Through her performance masters at the university of east anglia, Laura forged links with the sonic arts department and entered that whole sound-world, creating pieces for solo recorder and computer using Ganassi-style improvisation, and commissioning a piece for tape, voice, electronics and recorder quartet.
Her partner, Andre Bosman, and friend Alex Sanders were both on the course and we knew they'd be on the right wavelength when it came to adding the extra sonic effects we were looking for. We'd watched Alex's band 'Transcept' using gongs to great effect, and decided that was the way forward.
So the two gongs jumped on board, and we've been working at a mix of rhythmic and textural bowing and soft beaters to give eerie sparkle to some of the slower material and some dramatic depth to some of the faster pieces, completing the 8-piece Brighton line-up.
The whole group will come together on the 17th of october for an intensive day rehearsal at Raveningham church, Norfolk, for fine tuning (and lots of other tuning - around 50 strings altogether!) and getting the whole thing to really gel.
I'm really excited to hear it all together - a culmination of lots of organising, work ... and fun! Also to hear how the various pieces reflect the moods and seasonal rituals we've identified them with for the Harvest Queen programme.
The program consists of brand new material for our forthcoming album and some pieces from our last album 'Wild Lament'.
We reflected on all the music and came up with the concept, which takes themes, rituals and personal journeys from points around the whole yearly cycle with the harvest as its axis as fundamental in sustaining life throughout the year. Each musical piece reflects a piece within this cycle.
St Bart's has an amazing acoustic that is both immediate and clear and at the same time richly reverberant, so I think it'll be the perfect place to debut the new project- and at one of our favourite festivals! I hope to see you there.
Adrian
24th October http://www.bremf.org.uk
So the Brighton early music festival gig is fast approaching and its an exciting time for us as we're venturing into a new project that has its debut at St. Bart's.
The story of the project goes back to spring this year when our idea of an extended line-up became reality with the news that the arts council grant we'd applied for was 'in the bag'. Brilliant news!!! .... But now we had to make it happen.
Because of the nature of the way we work - magpie-ing tunes from all over europe whether folk, medieval, renaissance or baroque, borrowing phrases, repeating fragments, changing notes, playing two tunes on top of each other to create new 'pieces' - everything develops out of improvisation. There is no score, no defined orchestration, so it all had to be dreamed-up.
The original idea that was pitched to BREMF was a 7-piece line-up that would consist of lots of medieval fiddles and an extra guitar. A few brainstorms later and we'd arrived at (quite literally!) a paired-down version, with me and Laura (Horses Brawl) and Arngeir Hauksson and Rebecca Austin-Brown of the Bardos Band on guitar/lute and recorder/medieval fiddle respectively.
The idea was that both mine and laura's instruments had a double, and with some effective arrangement we could achieve a much more expansive sound with only two extra players.
This line-up was then duly sent to BREMF to go in the festival programme ......
But things are never quite that simple!!
We were still hearing other sounds in our heads. Maybe we were just going mad? Or maybe we needed all those fiddles after all.
We wanted a snappy, powerful and concise sound. But we also wanted to explore some sonic landscapes, timbres and textural effects that weren't quite possible with the quartet.
Cue Alexis Bennett (The Early Music Experiment, Dufay Collective) and Jim O'toole (Joglaresa, La Serenissima, English Touring Opera). Both fiddlers have wide experience playing early, folk and contemporary classical music, and were up for jumping on board and delving into some sonic experiments with us.
So, a 6-piece was born, and we were getting closer to realising the sounds in our head ... except we didn't feel they were satiated just yet ... Cue the gongs!
Through her performance masters at the university of east anglia, Laura forged links with the sonic arts department and entered that whole sound-world, creating pieces for solo recorder and computer using Ganassi-style improvisation, and commissioning a piece for tape, voice, electronics and recorder quartet.
Her partner, Andre Bosman, and friend Alex Sanders were both on the course and we knew they'd be on the right wavelength when it came to adding the extra sonic effects we were looking for. We'd watched Alex's band 'Transcept' using gongs to great effect, and decided that was the way forward.
So the two gongs jumped on board, and we've been working at a mix of rhythmic and textural bowing and soft beaters to give eerie sparkle to some of the slower material and some dramatic depth to some of the faster pieces, completing the 8-piece Brighton line-up.
The whole group will come together on the 17th of october for an intensive day rehearsal at Raveningham church, Norfolk, for fine tuning (and lots of other tuning - around 50 strings altogether!) and getting the whole thing to really gel.
I'm really excited to hear it all together - a culmination of lots of organising, work ... and fun! Also to hear how the various pieces reflect the moods and seasonal rituals we've identified them with for the Harvest Queen programme.
The program consists of brand new material for our forthcoming album and some pieces from our last album 'Wild Lament'.
We reflected on all the music and came up with the concept, which takes themes, rituals and personal journeys from points around the whole yearly cycle with the harvest as its axis as fundamental in sustaining life throughout the year. Each musical piece reflects a piece within this cycle.
St Bart's has an amazing acoustic that is both immediate and clear and at the same time richly reverberant, so I think it'll be the perfect place to debut the new project- and at one of our favourite festivals! I hope to see you there.
Adrian
Saturday, 24 July 2010
FREE SUMMER CONCERT AT THE RAVENINGHAM CENTRE
On Sunday 1st August the Ravenous Café plays host to a thrilling line-up of musicians. Laura Cannell (originally from Raveningham) is hosting an afternoon of music performed by highly acclaimed musicians, including her own duo Horses Brawl (described by The Times as ‘Virtuoso Magpie Musicians), baroque and folk fiddle player Jim O’Toole from Pakefield and members of the Norfolk folk supergroup – The Rampant Horse Collective.
Laura is currently working on a project with Horses Brawl which is funded by the Arts Council of England and will see them performing their new works at the prestigious Brighton Early Music Festival and National Portrait Gallery Friday Concert Series amongst others. She is also the current recipient of a grant awarded to her by the Musician’s Benevolent Fund, enabling Laura to research into various fiddle styles. Alongside a selection of medieval, baroque and folk music, Laura has also invited some of her most promising recorder students to perform.
Horses Brawl have recently returned from a six week tour of England which included a sell out date at Leasowes Bank Arts Festival in Shropshire, Leigh Folk Festival in Essex, The Grassington Festival in North Yorkshire with Storyteller Hugh Lupton, The Wymondham Festival, The Square Chapel in Halifax and Quay Arts centre on the Isle of Wight where they were filmed live in concert for the UK Entertainment Channel.
The Café will be serving a ‘Tea Party’ menu, which includes cucumber sandwiches, homemade cupcakes and lashings and lashings of ginger beer!
The Café is open from 10am – 5pm and the performance is from 2pm – 4pm.
Information and table bookings please call: 01508 548406
Monday, 12 April 2010
doodlesac
The great tune search of 2010 has begun....i'm not off to a bad start, just getting my hands on as much music that fits into my very picky self determined boundaries.
At the minute I'm re-writing and and being inspired by Northumbrian pipe tunes and really early European doodlesac tunes.
Branles, Gavottes, Galliards, Pavanes, Hornpipes, Swedish tunes and general Bagpipe tunes. Will def have to save up for more smallpipes (having sold the last lot last year to pay the rent...stupid money!)
Yesterday we did a nice little gig at the Ravenous Cafe: me, Jim O'Toole and Adrian. It was packed and really friendly.
Today is also recorder lessons day, one down two to go... all very nice and enthusiastic people so really good to teach.
At the minute I'm re-writing and and being inspired by Northumbrian pipe tunes and really early European doodlesac tunes.
Branles, Gavottes, Galliards, Pavanes, Hornpipes, Swedish tunes and general Bagpipe tunes. Will def have to save up for more smallpipes (having sold the last lot last year to pay the rent...stupid money!)
Yesterday we did a nice little gig at the Ravenous Cafe: me, Jim O'Toole and Adrian. It was packed and really friendly.
Today is also recorder lessons day, one down two to go... all very nice and enthusiastic people so really good to teach.
Wednesday, 17 March 2010
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