World Music Institute to Present Lucian Ban & Mat Maneri

World Music Institute will presents pianist Lucian Ban and violist Mat Maneri, who use improvisation to reimagine Béla Bartók's iconic field recordings of folk songs from Transylvania. Drawing from their 2o2o NPR Album Of the Year Transylvanian Folk Songs (Sunnyside Records) - featuring legendary reeds-man John Surman - and their new ECM duo release Transylvanian Dance, the duo will use the unique acoustic possibilities of National Sawdust's Meyer Sound Spatial Sound system to bring century-old songs back to life using live performance, audio from the original Edison wax cylinder recordings, rare handwritten manuscripts and photographs taken by Bartók himself during his field trips.

Hungarian composer Béla Bartok 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 "my life's goal". The profound knowledge and beauty of these ancient folk songs would also change forever his compositional vision.

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.

WMI's ORIGINS series features artists who delve into the folklore and roots of their respective culture's music to tell the story of their origins, preserving and affirming cultural identities and legacies.

Transylvanian Folk Songs Re-Imagined will be co-presented with National Sawdust on Wednesday, February 26, 2024. 

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