Mat Maneri & Lucian Ban © Mircea Albutiu, ECM Records
The 20th century Hungarian composer Béla Bartók loved the folk music of Transylvania in western Romania. He famously experienced an epiphany in 1904 when he heard an 18-year-old woman singing songs from her Transylvanian village and was soon on the road in search of more music. Between 1909 - 1917 he transcribed thousands of melodies, recording hundreds of folk musicians on wax cylinders and would call the completion of his research into Transylvanian folk music, as “my life’s goal”.
“A future generation might conceivably discover and embody in their art music properties of the peasant music which have altogether escaped us.”
- Béla Bartók, 1921
A century later, two outstanding improvisers – violist Mat Maneri and pianist Lucian Ban – draw fresh inspiration from the music that fired Bartók’s imagination, looking again at carols, lamentations, love songs, dowry songs and more through their unique duo sound and improvisatory concept.
Drawing from their NPR Album Of the Year Transylvanian Folk Songs featuring legendary reedsman John Surman and their new ECM duo release Transylvanian Dance pianist Lucian Ban and violist Mat Maneri will reimagine through improvisation the Béla Bartók Field Recordings of folk songs from Transylvania bringing back to life century old songs using live performance, audio from the original Edison wax cylinder recordings, rare handwritten manuscripts and photographs taken by Bartók himself in his field trips.
The profound knowledge and beauty of these ancient folk songs will change forever Béla Bartók compositional vision.
And they changed us too, with each performance.
“It is such a joy for us to use varied folkloric approaches from around the world - all filtered through our love of improvisation and the jazz vernacular - to dig deeper into these folk songs and find the notes that bring out the heightened emotions of all folk music. All these are illustrating Bartok’s profound idea of a „connective tissue” that ties all folk musics around the globe, a connection based on what he calls the „brotherhood of peoples”. Music always represents more than just the song itself. Folk music, folk art is a container of a communal culture. And even a hundred years later, long after the peasants sang into an Edison phonograph we partake in this culture, in its beauty and mystery. Improvising in the moment also includes our personal history and experiences and through the audiences we play in front of, it includes our collective history too.
We hope you can join us in celebrating the folk songs of Transylvania.”
Lucian Ban & Mat Maneri, 2025
Lucian Ban • piano
Mat Maneri • viola