Clarissa Connelly

Chatting from her home in Copenhagen via Zoom, Clarissa Connelly often returns to the theme of artistic bravery. It’s a quality she admires in artists such as Kate Bush and Joni Mitchell – and one which informs her own most recent LP, 2024’s //World Of Work//. On opener //Into This, Called Loneliness//, Connelly’s voice segues between almost choral purity and other-worldly growl, while on //The Bell Tower/An Embroidery//, her modulating piano chords arrive after a transporting found-sound passage in which she’s heard climbing an ancient church tower to ring its bell.

“Yeah, that was on the island of Bornholm off the east coast of Denmark”, she smiles. “I found a church with an echoey stone stairway so you would hear my footsteps. Church bells fascinate me. There’s often some unusual story about how they’ve moved around because of battles or some deal that was struck.”

Half-Scots, half-Danish, Connelly was born in Cupar, Fife and taught herself piano on a careworn upright she and her friends shoved down the street to her parent’s house. Learning “all the wrong finger positions”, she began experimenting with piano and voice, initially drawing inspiration from the Scottish folk music she heard at local ceilidhs and old Mike Oldfield cassettes.

“I love stuff like //Incantations//”, Connelly enthuses. “Mike Oldfield’s melody work is always so brilliant.” She also tells //Prog// of her fondness for Enya, Swedish singer/organist Anna Von Hausswolff, and the self-titled solo debut of late Pat Metheny Group keyboardist, Lyle Mays, among others.

It was after relocating to Denmark with her Danish mother in 2001 that Connelly later studied composition and music production in Copenhagen, making largely self-sufficient LP’s such as 2020’s more samples-based //The Voyager//, which was inspired by her extensive explorations of ancient Danish burial mounds, Viking forts, and megalithic tombs.

Now, Connelly’s road less travelled continues apace on //World Of Work//. “There are some pretty big existential themes”, she notes. “I was reading a lot of William Blake and also [medieval German mystic and visionary] Hildegard von Bingen’s Scivias. Both she and Blake ask some really great, open-ended questions.”

“It was also important to make this record with real musicians”, Connelly adds, “writing and arranging for some great friends here in Copenhagen. Sitting alone with your laptop can be wonderfully creative, but I’ve done that now.”

Given that she’s previously studied with such pioneering, multi-disciplinary women as Laurie Anderson (“We even did tai chai together!”) and Meredith Monk (“utterly fearless in a way which made me want to more brave myself”), it’s perhaps unsurprising that Connelly’s own work is becoming more multi-faceted. Witness the arty, high-concept videos for //An Embroidery// and //Life Of The Forbidden//.

The secret to such creativity, she says, is to retain your inner-child.

“I’m holding onto that adventurousness, that playfulness. As a kid in my parents’ basement I had the privacy to be silly as well as experimental. I still need that now.” JMN

PROG FILE

LINE-UP: Clarissa Connelly (vocals, piano, guitar, synthesiser, bells, electronics)

SOUNDS LIKE: Intricate, transporting art-rock with shades of Kate Bush, Mike Oldfield, Laurie Anderson and Pat Metheny Group keyboardist Lyle Mays.

CURRENT RELEASE: //World Of Work// is out now via Warp Records.

WEBSITE: www.clarissaconnelly.com

— James McNair