TRANSYLVANIAN DANCE
Lucian Ban piano Mat Maneri viola
On their second ECM duo album Romanian pianist Lucian Ban and US violist Mat Maneri find fresh inspiration as they follow the trail of Béla Bartók, revisiting the folk music that spurred the imagination of the great Hungarian composer who, in the early 20th century, collected and transcribed numerous pieces from Transylvania. For the duo these songs have become “springboards and sources of melodic material” for arrangements “that capture the spirit of the original yet allow us to improvise and bring our own world to them. If you go deeper into the source material, new vistas open up. These folk songs teach us many things.” (Steve Lake, album liner notes). Recorded live in October 2022 in the context of the Retracing Bartók project in Timișoara, these performances also bear testimony to the finely attuned understanding that Lucian Ban and Mat Maneri have achieved in their long-running musical partnership.
Their previous investigation of the Béla Bartók field recordings with legendary British reedman JOHN SURMAN produced the acclaimed Transylvanian Folk Songs album and was, as JAZZ TIMES put it “as much an act of tribute as it is a transformation”. The album quickly to Billboard charts, European Jazz Media Charts, Balkan World Music Charts, New York City Jazz Record BEST of 2020 and was named an NPR 2020 Jazz Critics Poll album. Rave reviews followed - the WIRE describes it as “Lush and romantic, with each note placed as carefully as a stone”, Deutchlandfunk Radio called the album “A magical event”, and the Financial Times talks how “Village dances with a fresh spin -jazz, folk and classical influences merge into a singular jazz voice”, and NPR describes the ““mystery in that bare-bones music and in much else on the album”. Discussing with Berlin Jazz Festival their investigation of folk music of Romanian people Mat Maneri talks about the “spirituality of these peasants that speak through music and how he loves this the most” while Lucian Ban underlines how “observing the traditions of folk music can teach us so much about improvisation and ultimately about music and life”.
Tickets - $25