See moreTransylvanian Concert marks an ECM debut for Romanian pianist-composer Lucian Ban and a welcome return for American violist Mat Maneri, in his ninth appearance for the label. The album documents a spontaneously organised performance in Targu Mures, in the region where Lucian Ban grew up.
A large, highly-attentive audience follows Ban and Maneri through a programme of their self-penned ballads, blues, hymns and abstract improvisations, plus Mat's chilling solo performance of the spiritual "Nobody Knows The Trouble I've Seen", the whole informed by the twin traditions of jazz and European chamber music. Rain, drumming upon the stained-glass windows of the Culture Palace, offers occasional melancholy commentary. In all, a unique and compelling set.
The now New York-based Lucien Ban first worked with Mat Maneri in the Enesco Re-Imagined project - and it has become a very successful collaboration. Ban says: "I think I first heard him with Paul Motian at the Village Vanguard...what impressed me was that he always knew what to play, when to play and when not to play. Silence is very important to me. Once we started working in Enesco project and then duet and other projects I was always struck by his ability to play the right thing at the right place and make it sound good and unusual at the same time."