Murmurists

Murmurists is the name Anthony Donovan gives to what he makes as a composer. Murmurists began as a solo art project as long ago as 1991; subsequently developing, through myriad fluid stages, to include small-scale live groups, usually improvised, to more recent highly-structured recordings, wherein speech and narrative are central components, with an international array of voice-artists performing Donovan's prose. Murmurists is by now also a fully-fledged 16 person multi-media live act, comprising spoken word, contemporary dance and theatrical elements, around musicians drawn from the best of the UK experimental scene, all reacting to graphic scores and timings devised by Donovan as a strategy to offer live, semi-improvised versions of his written material. Members are associated with projects such as Henry Cow, Stars of the Lid, Juxtavoices, Faust, Black Howler, Orchestra of the Upper Atmosphere, Crush!!!, Dunning/Webster, Destroyevsky, Artaud Beats, Redstart, London and Birmingham Improvisers Orchestras and Union Furnace, as well as collaborations with artists as great and diverse as John Zorn, Adam Bohman, Chris Cutler, Bryan Lewis Saunders, Lol Coxhill, Mark Wastell, Mick Beck, Pat Thomas, Jean-Michel Van Schouwburg, Evan Parker, Sharon Gal, Damo Suzuki, Ingrid Plum, Paul Hession, Charlie Collins, Steve Beresford and Yoko Miura. Donovan founded the Classwar Karaoke label and imprint in 2008, which he co-runs with Jaan Patterson. His interests are all either obscure or opaque, but morally authentic.
https://www.facebook.com/Murmurists
http://www.classwarkaraoke.com
https://classwarkaraoke.bandcamp.com
dr.anthony_donovan@yahoo.com