Maria Lamburn

Maria Lamburn (Madalena, Maria Madalena; born London 1960) is an award-winning composer and multi-instrumentalist whose philosophy of 'Living Art' endures through her music and poetry (represented by songs in English, Welsh and French) and larger scale instrumental scores.

Education

• Royal Academy of Music 1978–80
• Goldsmiths College 1980–83
• Guildhall School of Music and Drama 1983-4

Career

Maria Lamburn aka Madalena is a composer, vocalist, multi-instrumentalist and multimedia artist with an international profile, whose artwork has created a stream of idiosyncratic projects in the last decade. Her debut CD Murmur was recorded for the jazz label Babel (BDV 2027) with financial funding from the English Arts Council. Maria's next album Heaven on Earth was recorded with drummer Ian Thomas, bassist Dudley Phillips & guitarist Stuart Hall, and her multi-media work Taith Amser which toured Wales and played at the Vortex, London was supported by a Creative Wales Award from the Welsh Arts Council.

After graduating from Goldsmiths, where she presented a composition portfolio which included scores dealing with experimental graphics, minimalism, sonic collage and visual arts improvisation, Maria won the Cornelius Cardew Prize for Competition for Composition, in 1983. With a penchant for quirky soundsources and perception, her career has involved some unusual projects which have offered opportunities for interaction, response, and interpretation – such as field research at the Greenham Common anti-nuclear campaign, setting up a women's radio station, and street festival music in Galway with radical playwright Margaretta D'Arcy, music for Valerie Walkerdine's Didn't she do well? about the loss of roots of academic working class women and Home Birth – Your Choice by influential midwife Nicky Leap. Whilst she and husband Huw Warren have brought up their 5 children in North Wales she has pursued her compositional and performance work, receiving commissions from sources as varied as Gemini, Leicester Phoenix Arts Centre, BBC Singers, Chard Festival of Women in Music. Her music has been played and broadcast worldwide, from the BBC, St John's, Smith Square, The Vortex, Bloomsbury Theatre, London to Radio Canada. Maria has written educational compositions and arrangements, worked as a conductor and instrumental tutor (woodwind, strings, piano, guitar) for Snowdonia Steiner School, the Gwynedd music service and through her own business enterprises, Maizeh Music printing and publishing and galeriTONIC arts-education-healing. With a background in contemporary, jazz, folk and world musics, holisitic philosophy and therapeutic practice specialising in aroma, Maria's multi-media projects involve written and improvised music, visual art, including photography and film, scent and bodywork – family life in a remote region of Wales led Maria to pursue her lay interest in holistic medicine (which began when she met her homoeopath Tony Hurley in the early 1980s), and she embraces any opportunity to allow her knowledge and practice as a therapist to manifest as an integral part of her artwork. Current projects include her Welsh international quartet Golden Section with bassist Laurence Cottle, pianist Huw Warren and drummer Ian Thomas, Spoke'n with Huw Warren, the duo A Hedgerow Song with Mark Lockheart, and a perfume/bodyworks project with Iain Ballamy.

Aside from her own projects, Maria has worked as a performer with Huw Warren's A Barrel Organ Far From Home (1997 Babel Label, BBC Radio 4 & European festivals), 100s of things a boy can make (2003 Babel Label), This is Now (Welsh Tour 2005), Charles Hayward's Camberwell Now cult experimental rock band, touring Europe (mid 1980s) & recording Greenfingers 1986 (RecRec), John Cage at 70 in London with the composer – performance of Music Walk filmed by Peter Greenaway, June Tabor (trio tour with Huw Warren 1988; Always (Topic), Shelleyan Orphan (signed Rough Trade Records), Regular Music (systems rock band) – Regular Music LP 1985, Hot Club of Hackney Gypsy Orchestra 1991-3, Billy Jenkins' VOGC, Caroline Kraabel Mass Producers 1998, Mervyn Africa, John Stevens

Commissions

• Chant BBC Singers – St John's Smith Square, London (Radio 3 broadcast)
• Calling Kids and Cooching Gemini – Chard Festival of Women in Music
• Regular Music – Bloomsbury Theatre, London
• Celebration 1st Celebration of Women in Music and the Arts, National Gallery, Ottawa (Radio Canada)
• 1986-8 opera material sourced at Greenham Common and Galway, Margaretta D'Arcy

Videos –

• 1990 Valerie Walkerdine: Didn't she do well?
• 1991 Nicky Leap: Home Birth – Your Choice

Commission sources include:

• Gemini
• Leicester Phoenix Arts Centre
• Royal Academy of Dance
• Ysgol Steiner Eryri
• Arts Council of England
• Arts Council of Wales

Awards

• Winner of Cornelius Cardew prize for Composition 1983
• ACW Creative Wales Award 2005

Discography

• Murmur – Babel – 1999
• Heaven on earth – Maizeh Music 2006
• Taith Amser – Maizeh Music 2006

galeriTONIC

Maria Lamburn founded the arts-healing-education forum galeriTONIC, in North Wales in 2009. At the heart of Maria's combined work in music and aromatherapy, galeriTONIC plies themes of resonating sustenance and adventure between local and international communities, and esteems a truthful representation of the lives and channelling of present day creative artists: out of the horses' mouths, without the interferences or patronage of administrative opinions and economic stipulations.

Maizeh Music

Maria Lamburn founded music typesetting and publishing company Maizeh Music in 1998

References

• Who's Who in Music and Musician's Directory, 15th ed. Cambridge: Melrose Press Ltd., 1996
• The New Grove Dictionary of Women Composers, Edited by Julie Anne Sadie and Rhian Samuel. London and Basingstoke: Macmillan Press, 1994
• Contemporary Music Review (Vol 11: Reclaiming the Muse) Routledge
• Women Composers: An Historical Anthology (GK Hall) 1997

External links