This concert celebrates the release of Notebook (New World Records), the new CD by Lukas Ligeti’s eponymous NYC-based ensemble. The group to explores combinations of composition and improvisation that are too detail-oriented for a conventional band, yet too abstractly framed and rehearsal-intensive for classical ensembles.

Notebook employs unusual approaches to interplay — inhabiting a space between new composed music, free improvisation, and indie rock to create a vivid and distinctive expressive language.

In some pieces, an improvising soloist is “shadowed” by another player who provides a “background solo,” imitating and simultaneously challenging the principal voice. A polymetric drumming technique Ligeti developed—conceptually inspired by the music of the Baganda of Uganda—is used to conduct the ensemble, with each musician referencing a different component of the drum set as their downbeat. An analog synth arpeggiator functions as both melodic and rhythmic foundation, while West African-influenced melodies and white noise act as equal partners in melody and harmony.

Daniel Blake saxophones
Ricardo Gallo keyboards
Tom McNalley guitar
Eyal Maoz guitar
Adrianna Mateo violin
Rick Parker trombone
Lukas Ligeti drums, conducting

The virtuosic, culture-mashing, and technology-savvy composer-percussionist Lukas Ligeti ” –Village Voice

A livestream will be available free of charge at 8pm on the day of the performance and archived for future viewing.

Austrian-American composer Lukas Ligeti’s innovations include new methods of polymetric ensemble interplay and experimental intercultural collaboration, approaches he developed with groups he co-founded in Africa: Beta Foly (Côte d’Ivoire) and Burkina Electric (Burkina Faso). An Alpert Award laureate, his music is commissioned and performed by some of the world’s leading ensembles and is published by Edition Peters. A longtime active member of New York’s creative music scene, he co-leads the trio Hypercolor and performs solo and with fellow improvisers worldwide. Currently based in Brussels and Johannesburg, he is Professor of Composition at the Conservatoire royal de Bruxelles.