Transylvanian born, NYC based pianist LUCIAN BAN and American violist and Grammy nominee MAT MANERI are touring the US October 2016 presenting material from their award winning 2013 ECM release “Transylvanian Concert” and premiering new music for a follow up album: Transylvanian doinas, re-imaginations of Enesco and Bartok pieces, original compositions, microtonal songs and more.
When Romanian-born pianist Lucian Ban and Grammy-nominated violinist Mat Maneri joined up for a concert in an opera house in Targu Mures in the middle of Romania’s Transylvania region, the music was, as Jazz Times puts it, “as close as it gets to Goth jazz.” Released in 2013 by ECM Records, the Transylvanian Concert album features a program of self-penned ballads, blues, hymns and abstract improvisations, the whole informed by the twin traditions of jazz and European chamber music, and album has won critical acclaim on both sides of the Atlantic, including several Best Album of 2013 awards, and has spawned continuous touring.
The Guardian (UK) noted Transylvanian Concert’s “own kind of melancholy beauty and wayward exuberance”, The New York Times called it “a lovely and restive new album”, All About Jazz hailed its “moments of unanticipated beauty”, L.A. Weekly talks about a performance that is “mesmerizing, evocative and sensually explicit” and The Village Voice calls it “is one of those records that whisk you away”. JAZZ WEEKLY talks about “A modern collection of sonatas that erase the lines between jazz and classical, a melding of sounds similar to a modern liturgy”.
The two musicians first worked together in 2009 in the “Enesco Re-Imagined” octet conceived as a as a celebration and a contemporary jazz re-imagination of the works of the great Romanian composer George Enescu. Featuring an A list of New York most celebrated jazz musicians – Ralph Alessi, Tony Malaby, John Hebert Gerald Cleaver, Mat Maneri, Albrecht Maurer and Indian tabla legend Badal Roy – the album was recorded live at the 2009 Enescu International Festival in Bucharest and was released to critical acclaim by Sunnyside Records in NYC. The CD won multiple BEST ALBUM of the YEAR Awards from Jazz Journalist Association and got worldwide press coverage, including concerts in major venues and festivals in United States and Europe. JAZZ TIMES said “Enesco Re-Imagined is visionary third-stream music . . . this recording places Ban and Hébert among the great 21st-century interpreters.” and discussing their London Jazz Fest appearance at Elizabeth Hall The GUARDIAN talks about its “rare combination of uninhibited but coherent solo and collective improv, shrewd arrangement and dazzling thematic writing”, while London Evening Standard says “ 4* Stars! Romanian jazz can swing like the clappers one minute and break your heart the next”.