Cath Roberts and Dee Byrne have been organising projects under the banner of LUME since 2013, always with a focus on improvised music and new composition. Activities so far have included concert series, festivals, residencies and tours. The offshoot DIY record label Luminous is a home for releases by Byrne and Roberts, with long-running bands Sloth Racket and Deemer sitting alongside improvised collaborations and experimental offerings.
The story so far…
LUME started life in 2013 as a weekly night in London, featuring artists from across the UK creative music scene and beyond and acting as a space for new work and experimental music-making. The gigs took place at various venues, but mostly the now-closed Hundred Crows Rising in Islington followed by Long White Cloud in Hoxton. Alongside the weekly sessions we ran a monthly residency at the Vortex Jazz Club in Dalston from 2014 until 2016. For our 2015/16 season, we combined the Vortex residency with monthly gigs in a variety of spaces around the city, including record shops, galleries and bookshops. The gig archive has the lowdown on all the places we put on music during that time, and a selection of live recordings from our gigs around then can be found on the Live At LUME compilation albums.
LUME received the Jazz Services/PRSF Jazz Promoters Award in 2013 and 2014, and was a London Jazz Festival partner venue in 2013 and 2014, going on to host an afternoon of LUME LJF programming at the Barbican in 2015. In Spring 2015 we took our ensembles Quadraceratops and Entropi on the road for LUME On Tour; nine gigs around the UK with support from Arts Council England, who went on to support several other LUME projects. In 2016 we produced the inaugural one-day LUME Festival at IKLECTIK, London, and 2017 saw our LUME Lab series followed by the second LUME Festival. After taking a much-needed year off in 2018, we put on Entropi and Sloth Racket at Kings Place and returned to the Barbican for another London Jazz Festival freestage afternoon in 2019. In 2020 we co-organised a European tour for UK/Swiss sextet MoonMot.
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Instagram: @lumemusiclondon
Write to us: hello at lumemusic.co.uk
LUME logo by Cath Roberts
Photo: Cath Roberts and Dee Byrne outside Hundred Years Gallery July 2021
LUME’s back! film by Hannah Marshall, 2021