September 2025 → For this double release, long time collaborators pianist Lucian Ban and violist Mat Maneri alongside legendary woodwind master JOHN SURMAN further explore the folk music of Transylvania collected by Béla Bartók more than a hundred years ago. Taking the music on the road, the trio has deepened the spirit of their music while touring, as can be heard on their new recordings, THE ATHENAEUM CONCERT (vinyl) and the companion CANTICA PROFANA (cd). There is a spirit that passes through all the folkloric music of the world. The sounds may differ from region to region and from people to people, but folk music holds deeper truths that speak to the connective tissue of humanity. There is something mysterious in the way peasants or, for that matter, jazz musicians approach music. “It was such a joy for us to use these varied intonations and folkloric approaches from around the world – filtered through our love of improvisation and the jazz vernacular – to dig deeper into these folk songs and find that right microtone, which we see as a macrotone, for it is these notes which bring out the heightened emotions of all folk music . . .  a “pulsing life of peasant-music” carrying us forward”.

Get THE ATHENAEUM CONCERT here: 

Get CANTICA PROFANA here: