Singer Sarah McQuaid Releasing New Material in 2021

Cornwall-based singer/songwriter Sarah McQuaid is delighted to announce the release of "The Silence Above Us," the first of two singles and videos from her forthcoming album, concert film and video series, The St Buryan Sessions.

Released worldwide on Friday January 29, "The Silence Above Us" is the first single from The St Buryan Sessions, filmed and recorded live (with no audience due to COVID-19) last summer in the beautiful church of St Buryan, Cornwall, parts of which date back to the 11th century.

The YouTube video premiere, with Sarah on hand in the chat to answer questions and respond to comments, will follow on Saturday 30 January at 8pm UK time (12 noon PST, 1pm MOST, 2pm CST, 3pm EST, 9pm CET, 7am the following morning in Sydney).

A similar premiere/watch party event will take place on Sarah's Facebook page on the Sunday, with the same timings.

A second single, "Charlie's Gone Home," will be released on Friday, February 19, once again with video premieres on YouTube and Facebook on the Saturday and Sunday.

The roll-out of singles and videos will continue throughout the year, and Sarah hopes to release the full 15-track, 72-minute album on CD and double LP in late summer.

"I was in Germany, two weeks into a four-week European tour, when the whole Covid thing hit," Sarah recalls, "and we had to quickly reschedule our ferry tickets, cut the tour short and hightail it home before all the borders closed.

"Then my April-May UK and Ireland tour had to be cancelled as well, and suddenly I was at a loose end, with no gigs and no income. A lot of my musician friends were live-streaming concerts from home, but I wasn't keen on the idea, mainly because of dodgy Internet and the potential for technical disasters.

Sarah set up a crowdfunding campaign on the FundRazr platform, and by the end of June it had reached over 100 percent of its £5,000 target, enabling her to hire an impressive team consisting of her longtime manager and sound engineer, Martin Stansbury, who produced, recorded and mixed the project; mastering engineer Stuart Bruce; Cornish filmmaker and director Mawgan Lewis of Purple Knif, who worked previously with Sarah on videos for her 2018 album If We Dig Any Deeper It Could Get Dangerous; and Eden Sessions veteran camera operator John Crooks.

"We wanted to try and somehow re-create what anyone would hear and see at a typical show," Martin explains. "Of course, what we wouldn't have was an audience, so we looked for key factors that would influence Sarah's performance. We decided to use her local church, a space she'd been singing in as part of the choir ever since she moved to Cornwall. We set her up as if it were a regular gig: no flash studio mics, just the same touring PA and monitors she'd walked onstage to a thousand times, so it would be truly home territory. There was a set list and she was to play her set and we would record it."

There were a few concessions, such as toilet breaks and pauses between songs to move and reset cameras or wait for a lorry or airplane to go by (some passing vehicles made it onto the recording nonetheless, as did the squabbling swallows in the church porch - and at one point somebody's mobile phone, making it an even more authentic replication of a live concert). Martin also placed ambient microphones around the soaring space to capture its natural acoustic and intensify the listener experience of "being there".

Canon Vanda Perrett and the St Buryan Parish Council, and to the St Buryan Male Voice Choir for letting me use their lovely grand piano, and most of all to the 184 individuals who contributed to the FundRazr campaign, because we couldn't have done it without them.

"What I'm hoping is that I can eventually do a big album launch concert in the church, whenever that becomes possible given the Covid situation, as a benefit for the church restoration fund. But in the meantime we've got the video series, and I hope people do tune in for the YouTube and Facebook premiere events - I'll be on hand in the chat to answer questions and comments, so it'll be nice to have some company!"

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