A flutist and violinist at the crossroads of experimental genres, British musician Laura Cannell was born in Norwich. Trained at London's Royal College of Music, she went on to study at the University of East Anglia in her native city. In 2003, together with guitarist Adrian Lever (and initially cellist Jonathan Manton), she formed the medieval folk group Horses Brawl, with whom she recorded four albums until 2016. After founding the Brawl Records label in 2005, she recorded the Featherd Swing of the Raven album as a duo with harpist Rhodri Davies. Medieval folk, drone, improvisation, chamber music and post-minimalism are on the program of her subsequent recordings Quick Sparrows Over the Black Earth (2014), Beneath Swooping Talons (2015), Simultaneous Flight Movement (2016) and Hunter Huntress Hawker (2017), made between appearances at the Royal Festival Hall or the Barbican Centre. Her collaborations include composer André Bosman on the albums Reckonings (2018) and New Christmas Rituals (2022), the trio Oscilanz with musicians from the band This Heat, Polly Wright on Sing as the Crow Flies (2019), Angharad Davies as part of the duo Mythos of Violins and Lori Goldston for The Deer Are Small and the Rabbits Are Big (2023). Following Midwinter Processionals (2023), The Rituals of Hildegard Reimagined (2024) is based on the compositions of German Benedictine poet Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179). Several EPs followed, notably those in the A Compendium of Beasts series (Vols 1-3), before the 2025 release of LYRELYRE, played on a replica of Sutton Hoo's Anglo-Saxon lyre, an instrument buried for 1400 years and rediscovered in 1939. The same year, she recorded the albums The Visible Light of Other Worlds and Brightly Shone the Moon, in which the musician interprets personal versions of Christmas classics. In 2026, the musician bridges the gap between medieval folk and drone in The Medieval Drone Society, which reaches number 31 in the UK download charts.
