AXIOM Gallery: Composer/Percussionist Lukas Ligeti
Solo Concert Tour of Afrikan Machinery
By: Erica H. Adams - Mar 31, 2010
Boston Percussionist Lukas Ligeti, one of the world's top classical composers, unleashed his buoyant electronic music that reformatted the airspace of Axiom Gallery for New and Experimental Media, in Boston. Thursday's live re-mix, was a call and response between his laptop that Ligeti said was 90% of the sound sampled on his travels and, Marimba Lumina, a traditional Silicon Valley instrument.
Unlike anything you've ever heard before, Ligeti siphoned the universe into concrete and translucent sound-shapes. Layered, circular patterns informed by a matrix of African rhythms hovered cloud-like above his futurist keyboard. Intimate as chamber music, Ligeti's sounds invigorated brainwaves for a transcendent musical event.
On a nationwide solo tour, at Axiom Gallery, Ligeti improvised and played selections from CD Afrikan Machinery [Tzadik] cited as 2008 -50 Records of the Year by The Wire magazine. Concerts in Brooklyn and Boston, then Montreal and Toronto will be followed by many art spaces including Museum of Contemporary Art, in Ohio. See link: www.myspace.com/lukasligeti
One sonic landscape, Entering Perceiving Masks percolated in stops and starts in an interlocking pattern typical of African music, or Bach. Titled after an African saying enter perceiving masks, exit seeing faces was a dance for survival. A hulking machine fails to consume voluptuous tones, too quick to be contained, as their shapes and positions morph but lyrical character prevails. Surprisingly organic sounds Ligeti taped (and remixed) -a whistle, the sound of a hollow tree trunk, a traffic jam, etc offered a counterpoint to electronic timbres of his Marimba Lumina.
Since 2005, Ligeti has played an electronic Marimba Lumina, a MIDI percussion instrument created by the synthesizer pioneer Don Buchlas. Magnetic, color-coded mallets interact with magnets under the keyboard to produce sound. Of African origin, a traditional marimba is a deep toned xylophone often made of wood and hit with four mallets. The Marimba Lumina allowed Ligeti to expand beyond his DrumKat and need for more sophisticated software.
In Africa over the past 15 years, Ligeti continues to work with African musicians since the Goethe Institute commissioned his first collaboration, in 1994, with traditional musicians in Ivory Coast. As well, he's collaborated with musicians in Uganda, Egypt, Zimbabwe and, Burkina Faso. In 2006, he was composer-in-residence at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. Ligeti is a member of pop group Burkina Electric, the first electronic band from Burkina Faso, in West Africa. In March, at Johnny D's in Somerville Ligeti and Burkina Electric played selections from CD Burkina Electric PASPANGA.
Lukas Ligeti's engagement with polyphony of African music shares much with his father, the Hungarian-born composer Gyšrgy Ligeti (1923-2006) known for electronic music focused on timbres or textures informed by African music but rooted in classical European form. However, Lukas Ligeti has expanded and developed this rich musical lineage across genres of pop, experimental and classical forms through unforeseen developments in electronic media, including new instruments. Classical commissions by Ligeti include, American Composers Orchestra, Bang on a Can, Vienna Festwochen, and the Kronos Quartet, among others. He frequently performs solo on electronic percussion, As well, he has performed/recorded with John Zorn, Henry Kaiser, Raoul Bjšrkenheim, Marilyn Crispell, Jim O'Rourke, Gary Lucas, and John Tchicai.