Lukas Ligeti wins 2010 Alpert Award!
http://www.alpertawards.org/thework/music.html
AFRIKAN MACHINERY - OUT NOW ON TZADIK
Order at www.tzadik.com or at www.lukasligeti.com
"This is remarkable music.Ligeti represents, under a Clark Kent exterior, a new generation of musical Superman -- a globally minded, technologically adept, technically sophisticated composer who also happens to be a virtuoso performer and accomplished improviser.There wasn't a dull second."
– Mark Swed, Los Angeles Times
"[Lukas] Ligeti isn't trying to create some globally homogenised soundworld…his music is defiantly individual…Lukas has managed a pretty astonishing personal and musical feat in his creative life: he's able to acknowledge his father's influence and at the same time, sidestep it and even transcend it."
– Tom Service, guardian.co.uk
"[During Lukas Ligeti's solo performance at Le Poisson Rouge in NYC]…a merrily whistled (sampled) tune was woven into lively rhythms and West African-inspired melodies, which blended with Mr. Ligeti's drumming…wild rhythms turned frenetic, as his mallets blurred with dizzying speed in moments of rocklike exuberance."
– Vivien Schweitzer, The New York Times (U.S.)
(.see below for more press quotes or read Lukas's full EPK HERE.)
ABOUT LUKAS LIGETI:
Transcending the boundaries of genre, composer-percussionist Lukas Ligeti has developed a musical style
of his own that draws upon downtown New York experimentalism, contemporary classical music, jazz,
electronica, as well as world music, particularly from Africa. Known for his non-conformity and diverse
interests, Lukas creates music ranging from the through-composed to the free-improvised, often exploring
polyrhythmic/polytempo structures, non-tempered tunings, and non-western elements. Other major
sources of inspiration include experimental mathematics, computer technology, architecture and visual
art, sociology and politics, and travel. He has also been participating in cultural exchange projects in
Africa for the past 15 years.
Born in Vienna, Austria into a Hungarian-Jewish family from which several important artists have come
including his father, composer György Ligeti, Lukas started his musical adventures after finishing high
school. He studied composition and percussion at the University for Music and Performing Arts in Vienna
and then moved to the U.S. and spent two years at the Center for Computer Research in Music and
Acoustics at Stanford University before settling in New York City in 1998.
His commissions include Bang on a Can, the Vienna Festwochen, Ensemble Modern, Kronos Quartet, Colin
Currie and Håkan Hardenberger, the American Composers Forum, New York University, ORF Austrian
Broadcasting Company, Radio France, and more; he also regularly collaborates with choreographer Karole
Armitage.
As a drummer, he co-leads several bands and has performed and/or recorded with John Zorn, Henry
Kaiser, Raoul Björkenheim, Gary Lucas, Michael Manring, Marilyn Crispell, Benoit Delbecq, Jim O'Rourke,
Daniel Carter, John Tchicai, Eugene Chadbourne, and many others. He performs frequently on electronic
percussion often using the marimba lumina, a rare instrument invented by California engineer Don Buchla.
His first trip to Africa, a commission in 1994 by the Goethe Institute to work with musicians in Côte
d'Ivoire, embarked him on an exploration of cross-cultural collaboration that continues to this day. In
Abidjan he co-founded the experimental, intercultural group Beta Foly which lead to the release of his first
CD Lukas Ligeti & Beta Foly in 1997. He has worked with Batonka musicians in Zimbabwe; collaborated
with Nubian musicians in Egypt which culminated in a concert at the Cairo Opera; and composed a
piece for musicians for various Caribbean cultures which premiered in Miami Beach. In 2005, Lukas was
featured at the Unyazi festival in Johannesburg, the first electronic experimental music festival in Africa,
and in 2006, he was composer-in-residence at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. Lukas
also traveled to Uganda in 2007 to collaborate with the music/dance/theater group, the Ndere Troupe.
In 2008, he taught composition at the University of Ghana at Legon (Accra), and in 2010 he collaborated
with musicians in Lesotho, focusing on the lesiba, a rare traditional instrument that is in danger of
extinction.
Lukas' band Burkina Electric, based in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, combines African traditions with
electronic dance music and has been touring internationally, with recent performances at the BAM Next
Wave Festival and central Park Summerstage in New York, the Luminato Festival in Toronto and the
Montreal Jazz Festival. Burkina Electric's debut CD, "Paspanga", was released in 2010 on Cantaloupe
Records.
Lukas most recently toured in the midwestern U.S. and Canada in support of his electronic percussion
solo CD Afrikan Machinery (Tzadik Records), performing at venues such as the Museum of Contemporary
Art in Cleveland, the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati, and the Music Gallery in Toronto. Prior to
that tour, he gave solo concerts in the UK, performing at the London Jazz Festival. He also completed a
month-long curatorial project at The Stone in NYC and an American Composers Orchestra commission
and world premiere of "Labyrinth of Clouds" at Carnegie Hall with Lukas on solo marimba lumina.
PRAISE FOR AFRIKAN MACHINERY:
"One of the world's top classical composers…"; "the rhythms grow wildly complex, as if African music had been chopped and split apart, and the pieces reassembled at odd angles to each other. But still there's a typically African sense of community in each of the album's … tracks…. It's absorbing to hear, from start to finish."
– Greg Sandow, Wall Street Journal (U.S.)
"sophisticated music that has communicative directness yet retains a sense of mystery…he really knows sound and how it lives in the mind."
– Julian Cowley, The Wire (U.K.)
"eine kühne Musik…lässig tanzt Ligeti auf dem Seil, das er zwischen Tradition und Zukunft spannt."
– Christoph Wagner, Neue Zürcher Zeitung (Switzerland)
"brilliant CD – which neatly bridges the classical-modernist-world-music divide… If his art represents a melange of Europe, America, and Africa, it does so with unique finesse… The whole thing keeps you on the edge of your seat, waiting to see what comes next."
– The Scotsman (U.K.)
"Lukas Ligeti has crafted an absolute masterpiece… Easily record-of-the-year thus far, and slowly becoming one of my favorite records of all time,"
– http://www.adrian-clement.com/blog (Australia)
"…grandiose kosmopolitische Sample-Choreographie…sehr innovative Musik, deren Spannung nie abläßt, da sich hinter jeder Biegung und jedem Bruch neue Farben, Bewegungen und Sounds eröffnen. Große Klasse."
– DeBug (Germany)
