lemur – Lemur

Ståle Storløkken, organ
Bjørnar Habbestad, flutes
Hild Sofie Tafjord, horn
Lene Grenager, cello
Michael Duch, bass

The collaboration between Lemur and Ståle Storløkken brings together some of the most distinctive voices in Norwegian improvisation and contemporary music, set in the frame of church acoustics. At the core of the project is a shared, radical approach to the instrument as a sounding body, and a musical practice rooted in improvisation, deep listening, and collective form-making.

Ståle Storløkken is one of Norway’s most influential sound explorers, known from projects such as Elephant9, Supersilent, and his long-standing collaboration with Terje Rypdal. His work is driven by timbre, texture, and harmonic freedom, and by a persistent curiosity for the hidden possibilities and limitations of his instruments. Whether working with Hammond organ, church organ, or electronics, Storløkken seeks out unconventional playing techniques and emergent sonic details, always attentive to the moment and the space in which the music unfolds.

Lemur and Ståle Storløkken work within a shared improvisational space defined by intensity, openness, and attentive listening. Delicate melodic material may develop into dense sonic textures; mechanical structures intersect with organic movement; lyrical or sacred sonorities meet more raw and abrasive elements.

LEMUR 1924 is a live film-and-music project centred on three landmark experimental silent films from 1924:

Entr’acte by René Clair
Diagonal Symphony by Viking Eggeling
Ballet mécanique by Fernand Léger and Dudley Murphy

Inspired by Dadaism and early modernist approaches to cinema, the programme brings together radically different film languages. René Clair’s Entr’acte unfolds as a surreal collage of absurd situations and impossible realities, featuring key figures from the Paris avant-garde such as Francis Picabia, Erik Satie, Marcel Duchamp, and Man Ray, woven together through virtuosic montage and layered visual techniques. This expressive universe is contrasted by Viking Eggeling’s Diagonal Symphony, a purely abstract work based on geometric animation, drawing on both Russian Futurism and Dutch abstract formalism in the De Stijl tradition. The programme concludes with Ballet mécanique, Léger and Murphy’s iconic rhythmic study, where repetition, movement, and superimposition form a mechanised portrait of everyday structures.

With LEMUR 1924, the ensemble turns to film as a compositional framework, treating each work’s visual language as a score for live electronic performance. The result is a bespoke sonic landscape, performed in close collaboration with technician and programmer Niklas Adam.

Lemur 1924 – premiering our new project with music for three amazing silent movies from 1924: by Ferdnand Leger, Rene Clair and Viking Eggeling. Performances at Notam (Oslo), Spriten (Skien) and Cinemateket (Trondheim).

New project with Aplaca Ensemble, playing animal sounds across works by Biber, Lemur, Schubert and more. Concerts at Veierland, Oslo and Trondheim.

Playing at Mandagsklubben in Oslo

Recording and rehearsing with Ståle Storløkken in Ila church, Trondheim.

Lemur paints Glasgow red! Tuesday 29th of Oct. – AMOR/LEMUR at the Old Hairdressers; 30th of Oct. -world premiere of Shadowgraph, a site specific piece for 24 players and Glasgow City Chambers; Thursday 31st of Oct. Lemur live at CCA; 1st of Nov. – recording with organist Kevin Boywer at Glasgow Uni. Chappel. In addition Michael Duch performs solo at CCA on Friday 1st of Nov. Come check it out!

We join Torben Snekkestad, Michaela Antalova, Jan Bang and Ivar Grydeland for ‘Love your latency’, a remote concert during the PUNKT festival. See the concert either at Alladdin scene, Blå sal in Kristiansand, Elektrofonistudio, NMH or online. More here -> https://punktfestival.no/component/content/article/298-love-your-latency?catid=34&Itemid=115