There is a spirit that passes through all the folkloric music of the world. The sounds may differ from region to region and from people to people, but folk music holds deep truths that speak to the connective tissue of humanity. There is something mysteriously universal in the way peasants or, for that matter, jazz musicians approach music.

For this double release, long time collaborators pianist Lucian Ban and violist Mat Maneri alongside legendary woodwind master John Surman further explore the folk music of Transylvania collected by Béla Bartók more than a hundred years ago. For the past five years the trio has deepened the spirit of their music while touring, as can be heard on their new recordings, Cantica Profana and The Athenaeum Concert (vinyl LP only).

From Ban and Maneri's informative liner notes: "Once we took the music on the road an unfolding of a new musical spirit was happening to us with each concert. Revisiting the dances, carols, dowry songs, doinas and lamentations first recorded in Timisoara in 2018 with each live performance new vistas would open, new forms would spring, themes and instrumental roles would be freely interchanged, a 'pulsing life of peasant-music,' to use Bartok's own words, carrying us forward."

Extensive touring allowed the trio to really explore their repertoire. The pieces began to expand and evolve. Surman observed, "Sometimes using small fragments of material and developing those fragments whilst trying to retain the spirit of the original material." Each performance allowed the trio to approach each song in a new and original manner, whether it was dropping the theme entirely or just mixing in subtle hints of the melodies or harmonies to lead the group into new territories. The trio had matured to become a seemingly living musical organism, dancing to their own contemporary folkloric sounds.

To find such a dedicated collaborator in Surman has been a blessing for Maneri and Ban: "He has an uncanny way of playing these historic melodies in his own language, while never giving up the recipe that made them so durable in the first place. His wondrous range of instruments and sonorities wove a wonderful sense of orchestration that allowed us to enhance our own extended techniques and rhythmic altercations."

Each musician brings a unique sound and approach to the music, from Maneri's singular microtonal viola tones and esoteric musical influences to Ban's jazz leanings and archaic Romanian romanticism to Surman's contemporary cool and Cornish shine.

The material presented on Cantica Profana and The Athenaeum Concert stem from the pieces the trio recorded on their initial recording, Transylvanian Folk Songs (Sunnyside, 2020), yet the live reinterpretations of the pieces are so radical that a new songbook was born underlining the extraordinary power contained in these historical gems and the profound originality of an ensemble working night after night in unbound creativity.

Cantica Profana compiles recordings from three different concerts, all captured from November 2022 to November 2023, in remarkable clarity from tremendous sounding spaces, including the Centre Culturel Opderchmelz in Dudelange, Luxembourg, Stanser Musiktage in Stans, Switzerland, and Strasbourg Jazzdor Festival in France.