Transylvanian Dance :: Classix
May 15, 2025doors open: 19:30 | Concert: 20:00
“Mihai Eminescu” Central University Library Iași, Aula
A sonic journey into the heart of Transylvania, where tradition meets innovation and improvisation. The New York-based duo, pianist Lucian Ban (RO/US) and violist Mat Maneri (US), will bring to life the folk songs collected by Béla Bartók, reinterpreted through the lens of contemporary jazz, in a special project released under the prestigious ECM Records label. From love ballads to ritual dances and dowry songs, “Transylvanian Dance” will convey the authentic pulse of Transylvanian folklore, originally preserved on Edison wax cylinders at the beginning of the 20th century and now reimagined through a strikingly expressive sonic language. The voices of the peasants recorded by Bartók over a century ago will find new resonance in the vibrant improvisations of the two musicians, in a moving dialogue between past and present.
Lover Mine Of Long Ago (Original Wax Cylinder, Cenad, Transylvania 1913) Transylvanian Dance (Original Wax Cylinder, Bihor, Transylvania 1912) Make Me Lord, Slim And Tall (Original Wax Cylinder, Chincis, Transylvania 1914) Dowry Song (Original Wax Cylinder, Bihor, Transylvania 1909) Enchanted Stag (Original Wax Cylinder, Igris, Transylvania 1910) Jocul cu Bâta (Original Wax Cylinder, Voiniceni, Transylvania 1912) Poor Is My Heart (Original Wax Cylinder, Urisiu, Transylvania 1911)
The concert is part of the album’s international release tour, following performances in the United States and Canada, and continuing with appearances across Europe – in Palermo, Naples, and Florence in Italy, Paris in France, and symbolically, in Romania, the homeland of the songs that inspired this artistic journey. Lucian Ban and Mat Maner iwill perform in several Romanian cities, including Bucharest (Romanian Athenaeum), Brăila, Brașov, Zalău, Cluj, Bistrița, Timișoara, Arad, Baia Mare, and Iași.
In addition to the musical component, the performance will feature special video projections created for the project, showcasing Bartók’s original scores and rare photographs taken by the composer himself during his ethnomusicological research trips through Transylvanian villages.
This will be a concert about memory, identity, and creative freedom, where past and present intertwine, offering the audience a deeply moving and hypnotic sonic experience.
_________________
“Transylvanian Dance” has already been nominated for Best Jazz Album of 2024 by El País, Spain’s leading newspaper, as well as by All About Jazz and Postgenre. It has received praise from Canada’s Vancouver Sun for its “extraordinary performance” and from Switzerland’s Die Weltwoche, which noted that the album “makes this music shine once again, with Béla Bartók being, in a way, the third presence.” The album is also featured on the Europe Jazz Media Charts, where Belgian critic Georges Briquet described it as “an exceptional recording that guarantees an almost metaphysical listening experience,” while Germany’s public radio Bayerische Rundfunk spoke of a music that “opens space and time, an immersion into history and the present.”
The story of these reimagined Transylvanian songs began several years ago with the Retracing Bartók project, curated by Jazz Updates as part of the official program of Timișoara European Capital of Culture 2023. After the prestigious National Public Radio (NPR) in the United States broadcast an audio feature including excerpts from their music along with a refined analysis — a feature picked up by hundreds of local American stations — their first album, Transylvanian Folk Songs, climbed the Billboard charts, where it remained for several weeks. NPR critic Kevin Whitehead wrote about “the mystery and clarity with which the trio infuses traditional songs from Transylvania, and how the piano sounds like the bells of a church.”
The two musicians continued to reinterpret Transylvania’s folk repertoire through the language of jazz and improvisation on their latest album, enchanting audiences worldwide with performances of extraordinary emotional intensity.
Cultural project co-financed by The Administration of the National Cultural Fund.
The project does not necessarily represent the position of The Administration of the National Cultural Fund. AFCN is not responsible for the content of the project or how the results of the project may be used. These are entirely the responsibility of the beneficiary of the funding.
By purchasing the ticket, the participants give their consent to the use of photographic images and audio and video recordings for the purpose of promoting the festival activities by the organisers and partners.