Lucian Ban and Mat Maneri have been playing Transylvanian-tinged music together for 15 years, the last half-decade with reeds master John Surman. The trio’s latest release, Cantica Profana – as well as a companion album, The Athenaeum Concert – shows the three improvisors at the top of their form. The collaboration began with 2020’s Transylvanian Folk Songs, a set of tunes based on field research of Bela Bartók. Bartók’s recordings include thousands of melodies, which Ban and Maneri whittled down to just a handful. Most of the ones they chose were originally played by violin, flute, and bagpipes, an orchestration not impossibly distant from the contemporary group’s combination of viola, saxophone/clarinet, and piano.

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