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Lucian Ban & Mat Maneri
TRANSYLVANIAN DANCE
Multimedia performance
Date: Saturday, May 2, 2026, 7 p.m.
The concert duration: 90 minutes, without intermission
Based on their acclaimed ECM Records album Transylvanian Dance (ECM, 2024) Romanian pianist Lucian Ban and American violinist Mat Maneri are rethinking through improvisation the 20th century Hungarian composer Béla Bartók’s field recordings of folk songs from Transylvania. In their performance they use video projections that show rare original footages, excerpts from Bartók’s original wax cylinder audio recordings, handwritten manuscripts and photographs taken by Bartók during his field trips. Béla Bartók especialy loved the Transylvanian folk music he found in western Romania. In search of that kind of music soon after he took the road and between 1909 - 1917 transcribed thousands of melodies, recorded hundreds of folk music pieces on wax cylinders and after the expedition he termed the completion of his research into Transylvanian folk music, as “my life’s goal”. A century later two outstanding musicians – violinist Mat Maneri and pianist Lucian Ban – draw new inspiration from the music that caught Bartók’s imagination those days. They present in their special way with a unique duo sound and improvisatory concept the carols, lamentations, love songs, dowry songs and more.
THE PERFORMERS ARE AS FOLLOWS:
Lucian Ban (RO/US) – piano
Mat Maneri (US) – viola
Alin Rotariu (RO) – video design
*English-friendly performance
About Lucian Ban & Mat Maneri
Romanian-born, NYC-based pianist and composer Lucian Ban and American composer, violinist-violist Mat Maneri are renowned for their amalgamations of Transylvanian folk music with improvisation, mixing 20th-century European classical music with jazz, and for their pursuit of a modern chamber jazz ideal. The two musicians first worked together in 2009 in the Enescu Re-Imagined octet that was conceived as a tribute to and a contemporary jazz re-imagination of the works of the great Romanian composer George Enescu. Featuring. The album was recorded live at the 2009 Enescu International Festival in Bucharest and won multiple BEST ALBUM of the YEAR Awards from Jazz Journalists Association and worldwide press coverage. It was followed by concerts in major venues and festivals.
The duo’s first appearance at ECM took place in 2013 when Lucian Ban and Mat Maneri joined up for a concert in the Opera House of Tirgu Mures (Marosvásárhely), Transylvania region, Romania, and recorded their Transylvanian Concert, an album featuring a program of self-penned ballads, blues, hymns and abstract improvisations, intertwinned with the traditions of jazz and European chamber music. The music was, as Jazz Times puts it, “as close as it gets to Goth jazz” and won critical acclaim on both sides of the Atlantic, including several Best Album of the Year awards, and spawning continuous touring ever since.” Their previous musical setting of Béla Bartók’s field recordings by the legendary British reedman JOHN SURMAN resulted in the acclaimed Transylvanian Folk Songs album and was, as JAZZ TIMES put it “as much an act of tribute as it was a transformation”. The album very soon appeared on Billboard charts, European Jazz Media Charts, Balkan World Music Charts, New York City Jazz Record BEST of 2020 and was chosen as an NPR 2020 Jazz Critics Poll album.
Music means always more than just the song proper. Folk music, folk art is a container of our common culture. And even a hundred years later, long after those peasants sang into an Edison phonograph we still partake in this culture, in its beauty and mystery. Improvising on the stage means to include our personal history and our experiences through the audiences we play in front of, and it includes also our collective history.” - Lucian Ban & Mat Maneri, 2025
www.lucianban.com
Mat Maneri @ ECM
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