Roof Culture

Transylvanian Concert” marks an ECM debut for Romanian pianist-composer Lucian Ban and a welcome return for US violist Mat Maneri, in his 9th appearance for the label. The album documents a spontaneously organised performance in Targu Mures, in the region where Lucian Ban grew up. A large, highly-attentive audience follows Ban and Maneri through a programme of their self-penned ballads, blues, hymns and abstract improvisations, plus Mat’s chilling solo performance of the spiritual “Nobody Knows The Trouble I’ve Seen”, the whole informed by the twin traditions of jazz and European chamber music. Rain, drumming upon the stained-glass windows of the Culture Palace, offers occasional melancholy commentary. In all, a unique and compelling set.

Thomas F. X. Noble, Ph.D., is the Robert M. Conway Director of the Medieval Institute and Professor of History at the University of Notre Dame, where he has taught since 2001. Before joining the faculty at Notre Dame, he taught for 20 years at the University of Virginia.
The holder of a doctorate from Michigan State University, Professor Noble has long specialized in the Carolingian world and in early medieval Rome and the papacy. Among his many honors and awards are a Fulbright Fellowship, two National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowships, and two grants from the American Philosophical Society…