Transylvanian Folk Songs Meet Jazz Poetry With Lucian Ban, Mat Maneri, Joy Priest, & The International Writing Program at City Of Asylum @ Alphabet City

What’s a festival at City of Asylum without a little collaboration? In this combination concert and reading, not unlike our classic jazz poetry performances, renowned musicians Lucian Ban and Mat Maneri perform tracks from their latest record, Transylvanian Dance, which they will be touring with throughout the U.S. this fall. Included in the set is an improvisational collaboration with Pittsburgh poet Joy Priest and two poets from the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa.

More than a decade since they started working together as a duo, Lucian Ban and Mat Maneri are heralded for their amalgamations of Transylvanian folk with improvisation, their mining of 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 Enesco Re-Imagined octet that was conceived as a celebration and a contemporary jazz re-imagination of the works of the great Romanian composer George Enescu. ...

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What’s a festival at City of Asylum without a little collaboration? In this combination concert and reading, not unlike our classic jazz poetry performances, renowned musicians Lucian Ban and Mat Maneri perform tracks from their latest record, Transylvanian Dance, which they will be touring with throughout the U.S. this fall. Included in the set is an improvisational collaboration with Pittsburgh poet Joy Priest and two poets from the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa.

More than a decade since they started working together as a duo, Lucian Ban and Mat Maneri are heralded for their amalgamations of Transylvanian folk with improvisation, their mining of 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 Enesco Re-Imagined octet that was conceived as a celebration and a contemporary jazz re-imagination of the works of the great Romanian composer George Enescu.

In 2013, ECM Records released the Maneri & Ban duo album Transylvanian Concert that was widely acclaimed for “its original voice and unorthodox beauty.” It was followed in 2020 by their radical recasting of the Transylvanian folk songs from the Bela Bartok Field Recordings with legendary reed player John Surman. By year’s end, Transylvanian Folk Songs ended up on NPR 2020 Jazz Critics Poll, on Balkan World Music Charts, New York City Jazz Record BEST OF 2020, and more.

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