Maria Lamburn is an award-winning composer and multi-instrumentalist whose philosophy of 'Living Art' endures through her music and poetry and larger scale instrumental scores.
Maria Lamburn aka Madalena is a composer, multi-instrumentalist and interdisciplinary artist. Her debut album Murmur, funded by the Arts Council of England, was recorded for the jazz label Babel Labelin 1999. Her next two albums, Heaven on Earth and Taith Amser are of songs; Taith Amser received a Creative wales award, Arts Council of Wales to tour its repertoire of songs in Welsh with imagery by photographic journalist Rhodri Jones. After graduating from Goldsmiths and Guildhall School of Music and Drama, where her compositional output included scores dealing with experimental graphics, minimalism, sonic collage and visual arts improvisation, Maria won the Cornelius Cardew Prize for Composition, in 1982. Her sound world is idiosyncratic in rhythm, line and harmony, and is characterised by an interest in perception which has led her to find potentials 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 Didn't she do well? by Valerie Walkerdine, assessing the loss of roots of academic working class women, and Home Birth – Your Choice by Nicky Leap. Commissioning bodies have included contemporary music group, Gemini, Phoenix Arts Centre, BBC Singers, Women in Music. Her music has been played and broadcast worldwide, from BBC Radio 3, St John's, Smith Square, Vortex Jazz Club, Bloomsbury Theatre, London to Radio Canada. In 1993, Maria, her husband Huw Warren and children left London, returning to Wales where they both had family roots. Educational work as a conductor and instrumental tutor for the localWaldorf school in Tremadog, the Gwynedd music service and her own ventures, Maizeh Musicmusic publishing and galeriTONIC Arts-Healing-Education, produced a portfolio of educational compositions and arrangements. Maria's interdisciplinary projects involve written and improvised music and visual art - including fine art, sculpture, blacksmithing, photography, film, scent and bodywork. In 2013 she began to document a new tune every day, which led to her posting a daily publication Play On on Instagram. Investing in an historic life drawing group at The Institwt, Caernarfon, she saved it from collapse when Bangor University axed its Fine Art courses in 2017; she had already established the online Welsh Art ThreadAGORAEdau Celf Cymraeg.
Maria founded the arts-healing-education forum galeriTONIC, in 2009, a hub for her sonic, visual and olfactory arts expression using complementary therapy, teaching, modelling and performance genres, engaging with audiences, private and public portfolios, books, and journals.
