A recreation of a memorable night in Transylvania is in prospect this week as unusual piano-viola duo Deco Heart tour following the release of Transylvanian Concert by ECM earlier this month. The work of pianist Lucian Ban, who moved to the US from his homeland of Romania in the late-1990s, and US viola player Mat Maneri who started to work together for the pianist’s Enesco project issued in octet form on a Sunnyside album called Enesco Re-Imagined. But for this new album the pair travelled to Targu Mures in Transylvania for the duo’s first outing on ECM, a live affair that sees the coming together of many influences, a synthesis of Schoenberg, advanced contemporary classical music, much Ellington and Gershwin-derived jazz, and the hinterland of Ban’s belovèd Enesco.
The Ban/Maneri duo above play the Vortex, London tonight http://www.vortexjazz.co.uk; Voice Box, Derby tomorrow http://www.voiceboxuk.com; and Newcastle University Recital Room on Thursday http://www.jazznortheast.com/venue_detail.php?venue_id=20