Bartók Lives: Lucian Ban & Mat Maneri's "Transylvanian Dance"

The October 1st Jazz Shares concert at the Northampton Center For the Arts, featuring Lucian Ban (piano) and Mat Maneri (viola), was not only a transcendent musical and visual experience, but a history lesson and a testament to the human urge to preserve and celebrate cultural expression. Dubbed “Transylvanian Dance”, the concert drew from the groundbreaking work of Béla Bartók, the Hungarian composer who recorded and transcribed thousands of folk songs from Hungary, Slovakia, Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey and North Africa beginning in 1904.

The program of songs were augmented by visuals projected on a large wall behind the musicians.  They included Bartók’s still photos of people and their villages, his schematic drawings of the dances, his written transcriptions of the songs, as well as song lyrics and vintage videos of dancers, all in a series of gorgeous black and white images that moved and faded into one another. Throughout the performance we also heard a number of field recordings made by Bartók, preserved on wax cylinders using his Edison phonograph. Ban and Maneri brought life to the images, providing a soundtrack to the lives we glimpsed. Using source material gathered long ago and far from here, the musicians seemed to be in improvised conversation with the visuals behind them. Special thanks to Jason Robinson, who flawlessly ran the projections.

The evening began with archival audio. (Wax cylinder technology meant recordings topped out at just over a minute.) Maneri entered from the side, playing along with the melody. Ban soon joined him on stage and they transitioned to “Lover Mine of Long Ago”, accompanied by images that began with a photo of a woman, who was so strong and beautiful it took my breath away. As her face moved close-up, this nameless woman, who reappeared throughout the evening, looked straight at the camera, unflinching in the face of the new technology.

“Transylvanian Dance”, performed without projections, was next. Aided by a rollicking left hand piano figure, Maneri made the folk melody soar, before the two of them bee-lined to the 21st century in improvised flight that never lost sight of the tune’s framework.

From the stage, Ban and Maneri spoke with passion and authority about Bartók’s work and the importance of the culture he preserved. One point they made, which they reiterated in later conversation, was about the universality of folk music. Of course there is great variety and regional difference, sometimes even from county to county. But the impulse to sing and dance, subjects like love and sorrow, and the scales, melodies and treatment of the music itself, is shared across the world. Maneri, who is conversant in American blues, Arabic, North Indian, and Greek music, shared his surprise when he discovered the striking similarities between sounds made by people from disparate parts of the planet.

Mat Maneri is one of the more interesting figures in creative music. Matthew Shipp called him “one of the five greatest improvisers on the planet.” His mentors, his father Joe Maneri and Juilliard String Quartet co-founder Robert Koff (with whom he studied for over 25 years), provided him with a firm background in microtonal music from around the world, as well as Baroque and modern classical forms. Through his father’s long teaching career at the New England Conservatory of Music, Mat was immersed in the place. Ran Blake, Gunther Schuller and countless students were frequent guests at the family home.

In the 90s, Mat reinvigorated his father’s performing career by organizing and playing with him on recordings for ECM, Leo and hatART, now acknowledged by critics and fellow musicians as among the most important developments in 20th century improvised music. Mat told me the only poster he has in his home is of his 2004 UMass duo concert with his dad. His playing on Wednesday was exquisite, especially when he was barely touching the strings. His control of tone and the variety of what visual artists call ‘mark-making’, made clear that Shipp’s pronouncement was not hyperbole. His ingenious placement of a compact mirror on his viola case allowed him to see the projections behind him.

Lucian Ban was raised in a small village in northwest Transylvania, in the region where Bartók did his most extensive research and collecting of folk songs. Since 2013, when he and Maneri released Transylvanian Concert (ECM), Ban has continued his deep dive into the subject matter. He was granted full access to the Bartók archives in Budapest and permission to use his photographs in performance and on the packages of recordings. The duo’s two latest recordings on Sunnyside, Cantica Profana and The Athenaeum Concert, both featuring the great 81-year old British reedman John Surman, cover more of these preserved folk melodies. Ban and Maneri both marveled at the ease with which Surman interacted with the songs, and they expressed gratitude for the opportunity to have performed with him over the last five years. Ban’s piano was the rebar that supported Maneri’s flights of fancy. His technique of reaching into the keyboard to dampen the strings produced a marvelous variety of textures.

I’m thankful Ban and Maneri are shining a light on the world Bartók preserved. Acknowledged as the father of ethnomusicology, Bartók believed that music that was “pure”, or only one thing, is never as rich as music that mingles. Jazz is a living entity precisely because it is open to deep exchange with a wide variety of sources. Ban and Maneri are living it. 

Friends Assemble: Amedola/Greenlief/Cline at The Parlor Room

About three-quarters of the way into the 80-minute performance by Scott Amendola (drums), Phillip Greenlief (reeds) and Nels Cline (guitar) at The Parlor Room on September 18, the mood turned from thorny energy to profound spiritual grace. Summoning the provocative uplift of John Coltrane, Pharoah Sanders, Albert Ayler and other 1960s-era ministers of sonic healing, these three long-time West Coast comrades dialed down the cacophony and created an opened-hearted requiem for a dying world.

When bassist Trevor Dunn had to bow out of the tour at the 11th hour to be with his ailing mother, guitarist Nels Cline stepped into the breach. Greenlief had introduced Amendola to Cline in the 1990s, while all three lived in California. The drummer and guitarist have been close collaborators since, most notably as two-thirds of the Nels Cline Singers. Thirty year shared histories have their benefits: comfort with not knowing what comes next, and confidence that deep listening and experience will provide a road map. Such was the case on Thursday, as the trio manufactured meaning from chards of spiky electronics, braying saxophones and crackling drums.

Fans of Cline who were expecting the sweeping mood music of Lovers, the pristine duet filigree with Julian Lage, the infectious hooks of Wilco, or jazz licks heard on his latest project, The Consentrik Quartet, were rudely awakened. Instead they got  gnarly grit and audacious skronk layered on top of driving rhythms and abstract reeds. The juxtaposition of the music’s hard edge and Cline’s polite demeanor and generous spirit was startling. In the best jazz tradition, the 69-year old guitarist weaved superb stories. Over dinner, then breakfast the next day, we reveled in tales of his relationship with Willie Nelson, Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Sean Lennon, Yoko Ono and Duane Allman’s guitar, all delivered without ego or pretense. Cline is a humble superstar, completely open to the next musical adventure.

It was remarkable that Cline was free to participate in an eight city tour that took the band to New York, Philadelphia, Providence, Northampton, Portland, Keene, Bar Harbor and Potsdam. I began discussions with Amendola some 18 months ago to craft this concert, only to have to pivot a week out. Amendola, who studied at Berklee and lives in Berkeley, has been in the Bay Area for decades. From his home base, he launched his career with TJ Kirk (Charlie Hunter, Will Bernard, John Schott) in the 1990s, before hooking up with Cline later in the decade. Throughout his career, including on releases under his own name, Amendola has gravitated towards guitarists. In addition to Cline, Hunter, Bernard and Schott, he has recorded and toured with Henry Kaiser, Pat Martino, Jeff Parker, Elliott Sharp and Bill Frisell. Amendola’s use of electronics, which he plays through an amp and manipulates with pedals, lets him interact with guitarists on multiple levels. While it was sometimes difficult to differentiate Amendola’s electronics from Cline’s, his drumming was utterly distinct and delivered with rock and roll directness. 

One of Phillip Greenlief’s first recordings was Collect My Thoughts, a duo with Amendola, released on Vinny Golia’s L.A.-based Nine Winds label in 1995. Greenlief, who moved to Bar Harbor, Maine a couple of years ago, had been an integral part of the Bay Area creative music scene since the late 1970s, and has extensive history with SF-improvisers like Fred Frith, Jon Raskin, Lisa Mezzacappa, Gino Robair, Kyle Bruckmann and Trevor Dunn. He played alto and tenor saxophone and clarinet with controlled abandon, and his circular breathing allowed him to keep up with the uninterrupted flow of his bandmates. He asked if there are any high quality pipe organs in the Valley, laying the groundwork for a potential trio concert with Lantskap Logic, featuring organist Evelyn Davis and guitarist Fred Frith. Turns out there are a half-dozen beautiful pipe organs in Amherst, Northampton and Holyoke. More music ahead!

There is something reassuring seeing three old friends creating music together. From the stage, Greenlief told us that each night the music is different, yet the comradery and trust between them is a constant, and an enduring testament to the power of working relationships.

Tone Presence: Darius Jones Trio at the Shea Theater

Your sound makes you, you. Apart from phraseology and note choice, your sound is your benchmark, the personal stamp that distinguishes you from everyone else. Just as a person’s gait, fingerprint and facial expressions are unique, the timbre produced on your instrument can be a clear identifier. We rejoice in the distinctive sounds coaxed from the alto saxophones of Paul Desmond, Johnny Hodges, Eric Dolphy, Sonny Criss, Oliver Lake and Arthur Blythe. You can add Darius Jones to that list.

Giovanni Russonello called Jones’ sound “widely dilated, yet so rough it could peel paint — he could make a living off his tone alone." It put me in mind of Terrence McKenna’s proposition, that “from a species perspective, the job of each individual is to be unlike anyone’s who’s living or has ever lived.”

The Darius Jones Trio, with Chris Lightcap (bass) and Jason Nazary (drums), kicked off season 14 of Pioneer Valley Jazz Shares on September 13 at the Shea Theater with an incisive evening of original music. Having performed the previous two nights in Chicago (Sound & Gravity Festival) and New Haven (Firehouse 12), the Trio was primed to inhabit Jones’ malleable compositions; 90 of us listened in on their conversation.

The concert drew from the alto saxophonist’s latest release, Legend of e’Boi (The Hypervigilant Eye), with a series of distinct explorations that unfurled with unhurried intensity. On “We Inside Now”, Jones delivered long, plaintive notes that hung in the air like blue trails. He resisted the urge to speed the tempo or embellish the tune’s simple melody, opting instead to concentrate on that penetrating tone of his, moving from multi-phonic growls to notes of honeyed melancholy.

“Jones has a big, fleshy, lived-in tone, with a vibrato that owes as much to Johnny Hodges as it does to Albert Ayler,” Ed Hazell wrote in Point of Departure. “It’s defiant, vulnerable, proud, and weary; there is laughter and sobbing in it. He imbues simple melodies and phrases with huge emotional weight.”

“We Outside”, also began at a relaxed tempo before Lightcap and Nazary upped the ante by accelerating into a driving double-time with flecks of funk. Jones responded in kind with a fusillade of split-tones and staccato attacks. Without a microphone in sight, the trio filled the venerable Turners Falls venue with deep-hued vibrations.

Maybe because he is not as well-known as his bandmates, Jason Nazary was a revelation. The 41 year old drummer accompanied Jones on a Jazz Shares concert in 2017, and has worked with Jones for the better part of a decade in his trio and the cooperative quartet, Little Women. He also performed with the late Jamie Branch as Anteloper, and is part of Amirtha Kidambi’s Elder Ones. His fills and accents were spot on, fresh and consistently devoid of cliché. Within the modest trio configuration, there was plenty of space for showy display, but Nazary never resorted to attention grabbing. For someone with copious experience with beats and electronics, Nazary seemed to revel in the acoustic sound of his instrument.

People still talk about Chris Lightcap’s Bigmouth concert in Greenfield in 2016. The same penchant for ear-grabbing hooks prevalent in his writing could be heard in his bass playing on Saturday. Situated between sax and drums, Lightcap was very much in the middle of things, and his resonate sound, abetted by a new Jazz Shares Markbass amp, gave us a harmonic anchor. His arco playing on “No More My Lord” dovetailed deeply with Jones’ careening wails. A bonus: we got to meet Lightcap’s son, Sebastian, a UMass student, at the show; we’ll see the bassist again in November with Jon Irabagon’s Quintet.

From the stage, Jones shared his thoughts and some history about, “No More My Lord”, known through Alan Lomax’s 1948 recording of Henry Jimpson Wallace at the Parchment Farm (MS) prison. Jones reflected on the brilliance of the music, the humanity of the person who created it, and the system of oppression that birthed it.

The career of the 47-year old saxophonist is advancing on multiple fronts. He is beginning his second year as Assistant Professor of Music at Wesleyan University in Middletown, CT. In 2024, he joined the Roulette Intermedium Board of Directors, and became a member of the International Contemporary Ensemble. His 2023 recording, fLuXkit Vancouver (its suite but sacred), was listed among the best releases of the year by NPR and The Wire, and he was featured on the cover of The Wire in April, 2024. His 13 recordings as a leader include compositions written for four voices, string quartet, small ensembles, and duets with Matthew Shipp. Darius Jones has big thoughts and large aspirations concerning music. Don’t be surprised to see him garnering major awards and prizes in the years ahead. His sound precedes him.