Finally time to premiere our three-part marathon piece: Symphonie magnetophoniqe starts at 9 o’clock at Nationaltheateret metro station, continues at noon on Wessels plass, before culminating in Marmorsalen, Sentralens biggest concert hall.
Symphonie magnétophonique (2022)
A three part sound odyssey for transportation hub, public square, concert hall, electronic sound media, four soloists and electronics.
Premiered at the Ultima festival 21 september 2022.
Symphonie Magnétophonique takes place in three different public spaces: a transport hub, a town square and a concert hall. The contrasting social environments of these places and their different listening conditions is woven into the composition: Wireless microphones concealed inside the instruments enable the audience, wearing headphones, to eavesdrop on a ‘secret’ soundscape. Passing audiences and assistants create a continuously changing configuration of sound sources and listening positions. eleme
AMOR/LEMUR finds the Glasgow quartet AMOR in partnership with Norwegian improvising ensemble LEMUR to hopeful and ecstatic effect. Conceived before the onset of Covid 19 but finished during spring lockdown, their eponymous EP is the most loose, alive and elevated recording in AMOR’s catalog. The AMOR/LEMUR collaboration takes the template of throbbing avant disco expanded upon on previous recording, lifting it into new territories, with new tonalities and unexpected turns on the journey.
Following a revelatory concert in Glasgow in January 2020 wherein the two sets of musicians met and performed together for the first time, a recording session was arranged, resulting in the most elevated permutation of AMOR’s art to date.
Richard Youngs, vocals and piano Luke Fowler, synths and samplers Michael Duch, bass Paul Thomson, drums and percussion Bjørnar Habbestad, flutes Hild Sofie Tafjord, horn Lene Grenager, cello
Recorded at Glasgow’s Green Door studios. Mixed at Chem 19 by Paul Savage Mastered by Rashad Becker at Clunk Artwork by Oliver Pitt Released on Night School, January 29, 2021
Delian modes (2021)
A site specific work for quartett, electronics, portable listening devices and mobile audience
Premiered at Brannfjellet, Oslo, in collaboration with Konsertforeninga, 2021.
Delian modes finds its place at the intersection of sound walks, radio plays and concert music: the audience walks through a small forrest strecth meeting musicians stationed among the trees. A group of assistans carry a mobile speaker orchestra, transporting urban soundscapes into the forrest, allowing each listener to encounters different sequences of combinations between live playing and electronic sound.
The title and approach nod to pioneering British composer and radiophonic sound designer Delia Derbyshire, translating her studio-bound tape-manipulation techniques into a real-time, outdoor, walking format.
ALLOY is Lemur´s first collaboration with German pianist Reinhold Friedl. Fusing their practices and their particular taste for live sonic interaction, Friedl and Lemur found common ground instantly.
Meeting in 2015 for a series of concerts and a session in the studios of the Norwegian Academy of Music, the five musicians share experiences from working at the intersection of composed and improvised musics. A combined focus on the use of extended playing techniques, a keen taste for form experiments and the utilization of all different group formations within the available quintet, resulted in an organic but also strictly diciplined album, divided into seven distinct tracks or Components.
The title, Alloy, reflects the pressures and intensities found in such first meetings, where strong expressions and different perspectives are merged.
Recorded by Bjørnar Habbestad. Edited by Bjørnar Habbestad, Hild Sofie Tafjord and Reinholdt Friedl. Mixed by Bjørnar Habbestad. Mastered by Christian Obermayer.
For Harald Solberg (2019)
A modular composition for 14 musicians and three adjacent gallery rooms.
Premiered at Bomuldsfabriken 17 september 2018.
Between 2011 and 2018 LEMUR curated the concert series PB1898 at Bomuldsfabriken Kunsthall in Arendal. For the final concert Bomuldsfabriken commissioned a new work to be performed with an ensemble of musicians that have performed in the series. The result was For Harald Solberg, a modular work for 14 musicians and three adjacent gallery spaces. Moving between three different stations, both audience and musicians engage under different conditions. The title of the work is an homage to Bomuldsfabriken’s artistic director, but also points to Morten Feldman’s pieces from the 1970s and -80s, where textile arts are frequently referenced. The link to Bomuldsfabrikens history is thus an important connection (Bomuldsfabriken literally translates to the Cotton Factory).
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For Harald Solberg is performed by: Bjørnar Habbestad, flute Espen Reinertsen, tenor sax Morten Barrikmo, bass clarinet / contrabass clarinet Eivind Lønning, trumpet Hild Sofie Tafjord, horn Martin Taxt, tuba Kari Rønnekleiv, violin Ole Henrik Moe, violin/viola Tanja Orning, cello Lene Grenager, cello Michael Duch, double bass Jennifer Torrence, percussion Ane Marte Sørlien Hoen, percussion
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OVERSETTELSER Bomuldsfabriken kunsthall 17th january 2015
Oversettelser is the second of LEMURs happenings created for Bomuldsfabriken kunsthall.
When artists collaborate across forms of expression, we interpret, translate, explain and misunderstand each other, often with very fruitful results. Because in this process we negotiate. We search for meaning in what is different and try to understand our own art through that of others. In such processes, new layers of meaning are constantly emerging, like parallel stories, intertwined.
When LEMUR invites colleagues and the Arendal region to the happening Oversettelser – Translations – , it is precisely to search for, investigate and provoke situations and experiences we cannot imagine before they take place. Pupils and kindergarten children meet musicians, dancers, installations, sound and video artists, all in order to create meeting points between the performative and the spatial.
So – to translate is not to reproduce perfectly. To translate is to be open to listening, hearing and sensing the unknown – without letting the fear of misunderstanding or misinterpretation stand in the way of new experiences.
Lemur is Ensemble-in-Residence at Bomuldsfabriken Kunsthall and has since 2010 curated the concert series PB1898, which takes place seven Saturdays a year. In 2012, the ensemble also produced the happening Happy Birthday, John Cage! which brought together more than 200 performers in all the rooms of Bomuldsfabriken.
Artists
Øyvind Brandtsegg + Axel Tidemann Lotta Melin Trond Lossius + Jeremy Welsh Jon Halvor Bjørnseth Eirik Havnes Isak Anderssen Atle Selnes Nielsen LEMUR Dahlske upper secondary school Villa Matilda Steiner School in Arendal Arendal Culture School
LEMUR is Ensemble-in-Residence at the of National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design in 2018. The project Samtaler om rom is a dialogue with the museum’s rooms, programs and priorities in the period. Installations, performances, new productions and concerts are wedged in between the ordinary exhibitions, as an experimental and interdisciplinary approach to presenting architecture.
The project uses the institution’s natural ebb and flow as a framework: The first intervention takes place in an empty Ulltveit Moe Pavilion in January and February, followed by tailored performances, productions and events around the exhibitions «Visning» and «Boligideer”.
Polytop (2018)
A site specific sound installation for the Ulltveit-Moe pavillion with active monitors, transducers, headsets, speaker cones and exhibition furniture.
Premiered 20th of january, 2018, Oslo.
Like many other works by LEMUR, Polytop is a point of reference anchored in creative reuse of 20th century art music. The title plays on composer and architect Iannis Xenakis’s own term for spatial audio installations, an expression that he developed partly in cooperation with Le Corbusier. Developed as a site specific work, Polytop uses the transparent but intimate quality of Sverre Fehn’s glass pavilion from 2008 to question how rooms affect the way we listen, and how our listning affects a room. The installation utilizes different acoustic zones in the pavilion, encouraging the audience to walk around, sit down, listen with headphones or be immersed by sound.
Credits
Composition: Bjørnar Habbestad, Hild Sofie Tafjord, Lene Grenager, Michael F. Duch Sound Design: Thorolf Thuestad. Speaker-cone mesh constructed by Thorolf Thuestad and Eva Pfitzenmaier for “ord/word/Wort & land/land/Land”. Coproduction: Foreningen 3DA, Notam, nyMusikk, Lydgalleriet.
Technical system
42 channel sound system distributed over more than 60 speakers of different sorts and sizes.
Sound material
Recordings of source material have been made in Trondheim, Oslo, Bergen, Reykjavik og Köbenhavn, between 2012 and 2017. Contributing musicians are: Lemur, Caput Ensemble, Microtub, Eivind Lønning, Morten Barrikmo, Tanja Orning, Dirk Bruinsma, Robin Hayward, Lotte Anker, Torben Snekkestad, Liza Gibbs, Anna Klett, Ole Henrik Moe, Kari Rønnekleiv, Daniel Formoe, Ellen Holmås, Astrid Solberg, Astri Hoffmann-Tollaas, Johannes Borchgrevink, Marianne Baudouin Lie, Anders Rove, Jostein Bolås Brødreskift, David Andersson, Björn Petersson, Morten Berger Stai og Kristian B. Jacobsen.
Polytop was commissioned by the National Museum, with support by the Norwegian Arts Council. The installation was one of the four elements of ‘Samtaler om rom’, realized during Lemur’s period as Ensemble-in-Residence at the National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design, Oslo, in 2018.
Lemur feat. Stian Westerhus A merger of epic guitar sonics with acoustic gymnastics.
Concerts and recording sessions in 2016.
-‘The sense of menace is generated with huge energy by the belligerently brilliant Norwegian guitarist Westerhus who coaxes a plethora of tortured sounds from his axe, bowed notes elongating into harmonic dismemberment of epic proportions. (…) This is heady, sometimes heavy, otherworldly stuff, fuelled by jazz but never hindered by it. Welcome to the new century of improvised music’. – JazzWise Magazine, U.K.
