Deco Heart @ The Lit and Phil. Friday May 18.

Lucian Ban (piano); Mat Maneri (viola).

(Review by Russell).

New York’s Downtown scene offers the listener a seemingly endless choice of first rate musicians to get to know and sometimes love. Romanian pianist Lucian Ban, resident in the Big Apple, first appeared on Bebop Spoken Here’s radar last year when he visited The Sage with his Enescu project. Ban and the stellar line-up of musicians in tow gave a gig of the year performance. One of the string players in the band was viola player Mat Maneri. He was known to north east audiences having visited Newcastle on several occasions.

The opportunity to hear Ban and Maneri together in the drawing room environs of the Lit and Phil was too good to miss. The piano was to Ban’s liking and Maneri commented that it was a joy to play in such a great space. For the most part jazz fans stayed away. Those who did make the effort were duly rewarded. It wasn’t a jazz gig as such, more an improvised chamber music performance; twenty first century contemporary music with jazz elements infused with a subtle blues feel emanating from Ban’s creative piano playing. Maneri is known as an improviser from the ‘out’ school of performers. Playing on the ‘outside’ can be a hit and miss affair but when it works, it is, as they say, ‘something else’. This Lit and Phil performance was ‘something else’! The virtuosity of the musicians was never in question, the only concern was would it work? It worked, it really did. Slow tempo or blisteringly quick, the duo were at the top of their game, frequently swinging it like nobody’s business. The compositions were largely Ban’s - Not That Kind of Blues, Harlem Bliss Out and El Corazon – with one or two from Maneri, and Muhal Richard Abrams’ tune Two Over One. An encore was won – the applause was deafening – and everyone went home happy (some of us went to the pub). A great gig heard by the few. Be there next time.

Russell.