• Dutchess, 2021

• Vinyl LP

• Comes with 16 page booklet

A1 Anthem

A2 Idyll

A3 Study in B Flat Minor

A4 Caragh Lake

A5 Study In F

B1 Consolation

B2 Reverie

B3 Anthem Reprise

B4 Nicholas And Alexandra

30 years ago, Edinburgh based musician Tom Fraser was helping with the house clearance after his grandfather’s death and found an old scratched Transco record left out on the street. He took it home where it sat on a shelf for years until one day during lockdown, he gave it a play - and a whole world opened up to him - his Great Aunt Mirry had recorded a number of piano compositions which she had kept secret from her family. Since then, Tom has been re-working and re-mixing her compositions with his brother-in- law Simon Tong (The Verve, The Good the Bad and the Queen, and The Magnetic North) and together with project curator Kirsteen McNish they hope that this secret life will now reach beyond Mirry’s own four walls.

Mirabel Lomer was born in 1906 to a military family and for the best part of her life stayed at home in Ireland looking after her elderly parents. In the early 1950s she became a paid companion to another elderly couple in Wiltshire, both of whom she nursed until they died. While most of her life was spent caring for others it also transpired that Mirry had written music (despite the fact that as a young woman, her father actively discouraged her playing music in the family home). In quiet rebellion and creative escape, she composed this piano music secretly and her nephew and confidant Geoffrey captured it on his tape recorder.

Click below to listen