Prom 66 (6.09.20) Laura Marling at the Proms

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Featuring brand-new string arrangements performed by the London-based 12 Ensemble – whose collaborators include The National and Max Richter – this Prom journeys through the back catalogue of singer-songwriter Laura Marling, whose recent live performance the Guardian described as ‘like being dosed with a vitamin I had been leaving out of my diet’.

The Grammy and Mercury Prize winner takes the Royal Albert Hall stage for a one-off acoustic retrospective. Songs from her latest album including ‘Fortune’ and the album’s title-track, ‘Song for Our Daughter’, sit alongside those from earlier albums including Alas, I Cannot Swim – released when Marling was just 18.

[bluestateprommer]

Part of bsp's very belated last gasp of Proms comments for this season, and here, seemingly yet another case of bsp hearing this Prom on iPlayer so that the rest of you don't have to :) . I wasn't familiar at all with Laura Marling, so I'd no idea what to expect of her or her music. Perhaps it's a self-handicap, but I tend not to do advance listening via YT or anything else for Proms-booked crossover acts like, because I prefer not to have advance preconceptions. (Kind of ironic to say that in light of a primarily classical music festival.) In the event, LM is a fine singer and musician, even if the mood range was rather tightly focused through her set, to put it one way, in the general mellow and melancholy modern folk vein. A live audience would clearly have been most helpful and welcome, as with all of the events, but obviously that wasn't an option.