Maria says: "My 18th birthday was 3 weeks before the sudden death of my 39 year old Dad. He had toasted me in that party with a pride that I had not known existed in him. I ran into Wallace Stephen’s Of Mere Being somewhere in the bookshelves the week after his death. It was a gem of intrigue, and strangely imbued with a sense which had been dormant in me until then. In the same life, in different circumstances 20 years later Murmur emerged from the same source – it is a further working of my original perception of the poem, using the original music setting as a wordless song, accompanied by a text narration describing the dream of a woman who had that night conceived. All life overlaps, ebbs and flows, spins and turns, inside out, outside in, over and over into apparent stasis, mutations and transformations.’ Madalena. These are the bare bones of the material and intimations emerging through the CD Murmur, a collection of tunes by composer/performer Maria Lamburn – Madalena. On her first solo Babel CD you will hear resonances of a Moroccan mountain chant, a classical reverie, words both sung and spoken, wispy folk renditions, a haunting and meditative whirlwind of folk and global sounds presented by a brilliant troupe of musicians speaking the relaxed multi-lingual diversity of Madalena’s music with eloquent simplicity. Stunning, lyrical singing qualities and snaking, haunting textures – calling Kyffin Williams’ painting to mind – are merged to form an intruguing soundscape. There is an embroidery of ‘life lived to the full’ threaded through the fabric of this CD: the sopranos’ ‘call and answer’ - Mark Lockheart and Madealena - in Eleri is reminiscent of a Breton Fez Noz; DJ Milo’s turntables summon the spirits of the1000 Saints buried on Ynys Enlli – Boat to Bardsey; Huw Warren’s happy mood prevails in his bright and dazzling phrases on Aperture whilst his accordion, along with Dudley Phillips’ bass lures us into a Bedouin tent in Baddie Thiassi; Dudley’s insistent guitar offsets the stark, gut wailing in Paper Aeroplanes; the darkest beauty of Marios Argiros’ cor anglais emerges on his playing of the theme song Murmur in which Gus Munro sensually wordpaints the dream; a cock-crow, the sound of a 9-week embryo’s heartbeat and the birthcry of the footling breech born on Bonfire Night happen somewhere in Nufun Ledled …Martin Frances’ drumming holds the baby in the lullaby Enid Querida; and the earth is turned vigorously with Madalena’s piano and Mark Lockheart’s sax screaming in the middle of Tree Planting...whilst her whistle summons the birds and paints the flying maypole ribbons in May Tune. Winner of the 1983 Cornelius Cardew Prize for Composition, Maria Lamburn’s compositional roots are in contemporary experimental, medieval, folk, and jazz music. Commissioned work has come from many sources ranging from the contemporary classical arena such as the group Gemini, to scores for videos about subjects as diametrically opposed as home-birth (by independent midwife and writer Nicky Leap) and the loss of working class women’s roots (Valerie Walkerdine). She has written in varied mediums - vocal works, dance, film, world music, protest music for the back of lorries, mergers between DJ technology and strings, walking a path between worlds – or so guardians of the traditionally furrowed divisions of music might say.

In addition to her work as a composer, Maria Lamburn has worked with luminaries such as John Cage and June Tabor, performed with her own bands She Looketh Well and Ragged Edges, as a member of a diversity of projects including Rough Trade’s Shelleyan Orphan, Charles Hayward’s Camberwell Now, Billy Jenkins’ Voice of God Collective, Jeremy Peyton-Jones’ Regular Music, and Huw Warren’s Orchestra Helclecs and his Barrel Organ Band - whose recent release Hundreds of Things a Boy Can Make is also on the Babel Label. The concept of the Murmur launch in itself is unique – Maria is running a solo marathon down North Wales’ Lleyn Peninsula on 17th April 2005 in aid of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, planting a locally seeded tree at the end of the run at Rhiw, then pursuing her Pan-Celtic Pilgrimage of Cultural Awareness through Wales, Scotland, Ireland, the Isle of Man, Glastonbury, Cornwall and Brittany.