DESCRIPTIVE TEXT from VICC (Visby International Centre for Composers) residency, January 2026
by Esaias Järnegard, artistic director VICC
Marcus’s music is one of reflection. It seems to dwell in fissures, in the transitions between presence and absence, between sound and silence. Each tone is an event, but also a listening that recalls: that takes in and remembers the space in what has just faded away, or in the tender vibration that lingers as resonance (and memory).
The timbres emerge with a persistent gentleness: a breath in a flute, an almost imperceptible friction of the bow, small shifts that transform the whole. Nothing appears to be left to chance; everything is carefully listened into being in the act of its emergence. It is music that demands time, that asks for patience, and that, in return, offers a clarity that lingers, at least if you ask us here in Visby, like the sound of the sea beyond the city wall.
Increasingly, Marcus’s work has come to revolve around form. He often begins with shorter fragments without a predetermined order. These are set in relation to one another, tested, reshaped, until a whole emerges from the material’s own logic. Sometimes the form is fixed; at other times it is entrusted to the musicians to construct in the moment.
Here in Visby, Marcus has been working on a new piece for the Bennardo–Larson duo, for violin and piano, which has taken shape between walks to the sea, the sauna, and our old medieval lanes.
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MOTIVATION for the work places, nowhere, nominated by VICC for the ISCM World New Music Days 2026
by Esaias Järnegard, artistic director VICC
Marcus Lundberg’s Places, nowhere moves along the boundary between presence and absence, where sound (or action) and silence become equally essential. The work opens slowly, as if the listener steps into a room where every tone is already waiting, still and vibrating in the air. Its timbral colors emerge subtly, persistently, yet never intrusively. A breath through a flute, a tender, barely perceptible bowing, tiny shifts in intonation, everything carries meaning, nothing seems left to chance, but rather attentively heard into being. This is music that demands time and attention, but in return offers a rare, lingering clarity for those with patience.
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REVIEW from Vindöga festival, Gefle dagsblad 2024.09.22: Experimentella Vindöga väckte längtan efter nya konsertformer
by Camilla Dal
Kvällen avslutades med den mest kompromisslöst lågmälda och minimalistiska musik man kan tänka sig. Visst sticker det lågmälda ut i en värld av nästan ständigt buller, och musik av detta slag är en utmaning både att framföra och lyssna till. Marcus Lundbergs ''Landscapes, echoes'' spelas av de fem musikerna med den yttersta koncentration [...]. Det är tystnaden som ger även de allra svagaste blåsljud och prassel med löv och stenar en säregen tyngd, även om det gällde att ha god hörsel för att uppfatta vad som hände.
Read full article: https://www.gd.se/2024-09-22/experimentella-vindoga-vackte-en-langtan-efter-nya-konsertformer/