Born in Scotland and raised in Denmark, is a composer and musician of experimental folk, ambient textures, choral and electronic composition. Drawing on Nordic mythology and medieval musical traditions, she creates compositions that sit in the contemporary realm but feel utterly timeless. Clarissa enters wearing a beautifully whimsical combination of shorts, trousers and a wrap-around top, somewhere between high fashion and sportswear. Her energy is warm and immediately fills the room.“It’s back-to-back today, it’s actually a bit mad,” she laughs.
Following performances in Denmark and Paris, ‘Canons’ receives its Italian premiere at tonight. Within the walls of the Teatro alle Tese, the act brings together an eight-piece choir of friends and fellow conservatory alumni, including Erika de Casier, Fine Glindvad and Astrid Sonne.
“This is the old crew — the OG crew. That’s where it started… So it’s people from Copenhagen, mostly from the conservatory. But we also studied at the same high school before we studied at the conservatory, so many of us were friends before that as well. So it’s like friends of years and years.”
What began with childhood singing games in Scotland later found a new form in Copenhagen, where Clarissa started teaching canons to musician friends, including during trips to the Danish island of Fanø. Over time, these informal gatherings developed into a larger choral project.
The appeal, however, remains much the same… It’s simply about making music with the people she loves. “We all have our individual projects, and being great friends, it’s nice to share music that we make ourselves,” she explains. “It’s still a way of being together, performing together, singing together. It’s just a lovely way of spending time with friends.”
Eschewing backtracks and elaborate arrangements, the project centres on the human body as an instrument. Unadorned vocal harmonies are kept in time by the slapping of thighs and the tapping of feet. “This project invites music into all our lives, rather than requiring you to be really skilled at an instrument to play a concert. Anyone can sit with their friends and sing – and that’s the point. It’s just our voices; there’s nothing else, we don’t even have a key with us. And there’s so much psychological depth in how our voices sound. We’re totally naked on stage like that.”
To shake off their nerves before the performance, the ensemble run onto the stage before taking their seats, turning their initial adrenaline into a playful, physical reset. Clarissa tells me she begins with bells she recorded in Denmark, using them “to just set the scene”. The idea, she explains, is to imagine the performers “running into the schoolyard”, before sitting down together to “sing songs”. “It fits the whole theme of Child Of Sound,” she remarks, “because it feels like we’re just kids.”
While Clarissa admits to being meticulous in her songwriting, she intentionally relinquishes control during performances. “What I really like about the project is I can be really perfectionistic about writing the melodies and where the harmonics hit. But with the performance part of it, I really like losing a bit of control and letting them interpret. The imperfection is a really big part of it, but that’s what I really love about it. It’s very honest and out in the open.”
Another beautiful aspect of the process, she tells me, is that the ensemble depends entirely on who is available at any given time. Rather than creating a disruption, this fluidity brings a sense of freedom to the project, ensuring that no two performances sound quite the same. As Clarissa explains, “when two voices meet, they create a new timbre”. Each singer interprets the melody in their own way, and by allowing everyone the freedom to “do their thing”, the music shifts and takes on a different character each time.
“I feel at home when we sing these canons together. Then it’s like everything disappears – all the shit going on in the world […] I feel at home being in music.”
Notions of home are particularly interesting in the context of Clarissa’s own life. Born in Fife, Scotland, she relocated to Copenhagen as a child, where she attended high school before going on to study at the conservatory. Raised Catholic, she eventually felt she “had to turn away from” the faith, with music gradually coming to occupy the space it once held. “I think music took that space a long time ago,” she says.
She’s also drawn to the relationship between physical space and sound, and the ways our surroundings shape the music we make and how we experience it. She recalls childhood memories of lying in bed, listening to her parents in another room, “falling asleep while music is playing behind doors and behind walls”. Listening from another room, she noticed the way the melodies would “bend and turn”. It’s a seemingly small recollection, but one that sits with me. There’s something quite beautiful about the idea that music can be reframed by the act of listening from somewhere else; that distance, architecture and proximity can all become part of the composition.
This relationship between space and sound is central to Canons. Clarissa says that the music responds to the spaces in which it is performed, taking on a different character each time. “We performed in Paris at Le Centquatre, where the reverb was almost 12 seconds, which changed the music completely. This room in Venice has a really special feel because of the stone walls and the water outside. It doesn’t have a long reverb, but it rings in a really special way. I think we’ll sing with a little more power tonight, because when a room gives you so much, it changes a lot.”
There’s a fascinating relationship here between the physical and the intangible. The architecture doesn’t merely house the music, but becomes part of its dialogue.
Clarissa describes a very distinct feeling that emerges when performing, when the harmonies suddenly lock into place and there is a palpable shift. She calls it “transgressive ecstasy”; an almost euphoric experience. “It’s a huge kick and it’s like, yeah, it elevates. I don’t know what happens, and that’s what’s interesting about what music can do.” She struggles to find the words for the sensation, but offers an image… “What is it when the roof suddenly just pops off and you feel like something is very, very open?” she asks, smiling.
Clarissa Connelly’s is a case-in-point that musical experimentation need not depend on technical complexity or virtuosity. At its heart, it’s about the simple acts of connection and friendship. It speaks to music’s ability to create communion – or in Barbieri’s words, “collective catharsis” – and to open up something beyond ourselves.
I leave our conversation thinking about my own relationship with music, and the ways it has brought me closer to others, and to myself.