The work of a previously unknown female composer is to be released for the first time by Simon Tong, musician with the Verve, The Magnetic North and the Good The Bad & The Queen. Mirabel Lomer, known as Mirry, spent her life as a carer, first to her parents and then an elderly couple in Wiltshire. Throughout her work in the service of others, Mirry composed pieces of music that were recorded by her nephew. Never commercially released, this work was discovered during a house clearance by her great nephew, Edinburgh musician Tom Fraser. Startled by what he had heard, Fraser and his brother-in-law Tong worked on an album of Mirry’s music, described as "a celebration of Mirry’s work and a call and response to
her original recordings with her family members – almost as if she were still in a room with them." Mirry is released in a special Dinked Edition this December (preorder here), with a full album to follow in February 2021.
You can listen to ‘Study In B Flat Minor’ for the album above, accompanied by a video of Super 8 footage also discovered in a family attic, and edited together by Camella Kirk. “This project hopes to shine a light on carers, and how ones creative work can live on and continue to reverberate and evolve long after it’s original conception,” says Tong. The Mirry project, produced by Kirsteen McNish, is also encouraging people to donate to the Carer’s Trust in Mirry’s memory.
