Lukas Ligeti’s Notebook: CD Release Concert

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.