Composition and improvisation are seemingly opposing activities, and music history is full of polarised positions and opinions on their difference. Not so in the case of Lemur. With the formation of the ensemble in 2009, four musicians came together with backgrounds comprising a veritable pamphlet of contemporary sound practices. Our skills and interests ranged from noise and sound art through new complexity instrumental and notational virtuosity, free jazz, electroacoustics and idiomatic improvisation. In this heterogeneous landscape, methodical or stylistic single mindedness was never a choice. That the activities of the quartet gradually transformed towards collective composition could probably best be thought of as an organic process more than a change of direction.

While continuing to perform as an improvising unit, Lemur have composed 12 large scale works for the ensemble and its various extensions in the time between 2012 and 2025. This book presents three of those works alongside articles investigating Lemur’s artistic practice.

CONTENTS

Introduction:

Lemur: Composing with Lemur

Ulf A.S.Holbrook: Carthographic constructions and transformations

Scores:

Mikrophonie (2013)

Lemuria (2017)

Out of the Dark (2019)

Context:

Lene Grenager and Bjørnar Habbestad: On the making of a work

Hild Borchgrevink: Lemuria - a mechanism of abundance

Michael Duch: Reminiscing and revisiting Mikrophonie

Ida Habbestad: Developing a listening scenography

Appendix:

Performances

Recordings

Work List

Biographies