A stereophonic ear-theatre for quartet and field recordings
Under development. Expected premiere spring 2025.
A new work for ensemble and electronics where encapsulating soundscapes are drawn from outdoor performances at Veierland, a small roadless island outside Tønsberg, Norway. Changing sonic scenarios are captured and manipulated live, woven into the subtle performance of the four instrumentalists.
A sonic superimposition for amplified soloist quartet, sinfonietta and electronics.
Premiered at the Erkiti∂ festival in Reykjavik, november 2023. Caput ensemble, conducted by Gu∂ni Franzson.
Critical Bands IIa stems from Lemurs decade-long work with physical, abstract and ephemeral sonic spaces. Combining a fixed score with recorded and processed material, the composition draws on Lemurs highly personal improvisatory language as a tool for spatial exploration.
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
A site specific work for quartett, electronics, portable listening devices and mobile audience
Premiered at Brannfjellet, Oslo, in collaboration with Konsertforeninga, 2021.
Delian Modes is a composition for four instrumentalists, portable speakers and a mobile audience. At the intersection of sound walks, radio plays and concert music, the audience is guided through different forest environments in encounters with ever new combinations of musicians and electronic sound sources. The work is inspired by the sound design of pioneering British composer Delia Derbyshire.
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).
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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A site specific concert for the old Athens Stock Exchange, ensemble and electronics.
Out of the Dark combines performances in several rooms, field recordings from the surrounding area and a bespoke sound system to articulate the space of the old Athens Stock Exchange. Using data from the hours leading up to the 2008 crash, a detailed score structures the activities of the four musicians, the sound processing and the spatial design.
Commissioned by Onassis Foundation.
Premiered June 7th as part of Tectonics Athens
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.
A concert installation for 6 audio islands, 4 instruments, 2 voices and electronic sound processing
Premiered 10th of March 2017
‘Lemuria’ draws not only upon the myth of the lost sivilization, but also a movement from Luigi Nono’s work “Guai ai gelidi mostri”, one of the many points in his oeuvre where the notion of islands occur.
Lemur’s “Lemuria” employs this island motif as metaphor in its broadest sense: as a concept for sound distribution, as an ideal for the placement of musicians and audience and as a compositional strategy. Built up from isolated sounds and material types, the work was developed independantly by the performers, then later combined into textures highlighting different aspects of the performance space.
The piece is performed from 6 “islands” spaced out through the venue. Each island is a station manned by a performer, two speakers and a light source. Each performer is both soloist and ensemble as the music reconfigures the site and the sound across the span of the performance. Audience can choose to sit or move through different positions as they please. Lemuria was comissioned by and premiered at the Borealis festival in Bergen in March 2017.
Matrix of possibilities
Robert Barry
seismograf.org
There is a peculiar gait employed by those who deign to patrol the space of a concert hall during such works as invite their audience to walk about during the performance. Lolling but hesitant, always solitary and serious-faced, they look a little like movie somnambulists. But such studied perambulations are hardly necessary to the appreciation of Lemuria, a new work by Norwegian improvising group LEMUR, for so successfully did it evoke, by its own means, a sense of movement, narrative, and far-off places.
Inspired by Luigi Nono’s Guai ai gelidi mostri and the spurious ‘lost continent’ proposed by Victorian zoologist, Philip Sclater, the piece sees LEMUR’s four regular members (flautist Bjørnar Habbestad, cellist Lene Grenager, horn player Hild Sofie Tafjord, and double bassist Michael Francis Duch) and two additional vocalists (Unni Løvlid and Stine Janvin Motland) dispersed amongst six ‘islands’ throughout the concert hall at Grandbergen, following a loose score, more like a matrix of possibilities than precisely encoded instruction, governing pauses and processes rather than specific notes. Listening to Duch tenderly pluck at his bass strings, letting them rattle against the screw of his bow, and the always-otherworldly voice of Stine Janvin Motland, I feel myself transported, temporarily, dreaming of other worlds.
Photo: Kjetil Tofte – Destillert
For large improvising ensemble.
Premiered 21st of October 2016, Oslo
Karyobin is centered around principles of group interaction rather than specific musical delimitations. The title is a reference to the 1968 classic by Spontaneous Music Ensemble (SME), as an hommage and acknowledgement to the parallels between LEMURs and John Stevens methods for developing structure in free improvisation.
The work is developed through a process involving LEMUR as composers interacting with different groups of performers in order to structure micro and macro action. The work is flexibly designed and adapts to the participating musicians, ensuring that they have a substantial influence on the musical situation through different kinds of decision-making.
Central to the work is its underlying attitude towards music-making as a social enterprise. Its development is the result of several collaborations with ensembles like Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra, Great Learning Orchestra, Iceland Symphony Orchestra and N ensemble.
Spatialized concert music for ensemble, microphones, headsets and speakers
Premiered 21st of November 2013, Tolouse.
Mikrophonie turns its attention to the inside of musical instruments. A sonic microscope is created, performed, mixed and diffused in real time through the use of extreme close-miking of the ensemble and wireless headsets for the audience. The piece challenges conceptions of instrumental, electro-acoustic and social space, setting all these components into play through a the manipulation of real and virtual sonic rooms.
Mikrophonie is developed by Lemur and Benjamin Maumus, one of Europe’s most experienced sound engineers and spatialization experts.
The project was developed in workshops in Norway and France, supported by GMEA, BEK and WRAP. The premiere performance was given at Journées Electriques in Albi, march 2014. Later performances includes Tolouse (Novelum 2014), Oslo (Notam, 2014) and Bergen (Lydgalleriet, 2014). Mikrophonie was recorded and will be released on +3DB records in november 2016.