Thu, 03 June 2004

Lukas is on the left, and Raoul on the right

9pm, Thurs, June 3
$5 at the door
Eyedrum
290 MLK Jr. Drive, Suite 8
404-522-0655
www.eyedrum.org

Raoul Björkenheim was born to Finnish parents in Los Ageles in 1956, his veins coursing with Finnish, Swedish and Russian bood. As a youth he attended French, Swedish and English speaking schools, and then studied at the Berklee College of Music in Boston. From here he moved back to Helsinki, where he worked with the Finnish guru o European free jazz, Edward Vesala. Recording several albums with him, the last one on ECM, brought Raoul to the attention of a broader international audience. He went on to form the group Krakatau and recorded 4 CDs, two of them also on ECM. Thanks to these, he began to appear as a sideman in many ensembles, performing around Europe with Bill Laswell, Jah Wobble, Paul Schütze, Henry Kaiser, Ronald Shannon Jackson, Mats  Gustaffson and Toshinori Kondo, among others.

Over the years he has been commissioned to write for several symphony orchestras, the most successfull work being "Situations", a concerto for guitar, violin and orchestra. He has won the Young Finland prize, the Emma prize for best jazz CD of the year (Finnish Grammy) and has been nominated three times for the Nordic Music Prize.

He now lives in New York City, and his main group is the Scorch Trio, with the Norwegians Paal Nilssen-Love and Ingebrigt Håker Flaten, whose second CD is to be released on Rune grammofon in September, 2004.

Lukas Ligeti’s work covers areas as diverse as "classical" composition, electronics, improvised music, and cross-cultural collaboration. Ligeti studied composition and jazz drums at the Vienna Music Academy as well as two years at Stanford University’s Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics. He has composed music for Ensemble Modern, the Kronos Quartet, and his own group Beta Foly, which combines African and Occidental music in experimental ways. His music has been performed by the London Sinfonietta, San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, Orchestre National de Lyon, London Composers’ Ensemble, Amadinda, and Synergy; and at festivals such as Other Minds (San Francisco), Festival d’Automne a Paris,  Meltdown Festival (London), Wien Modern (Vienna), and many more worldwide.

As an improvising musician, he has worked with Henry Kaiser, Elliott Sharp, Michael Manring, Wadada Leo Smith, John Tchicai, Benoit Delbecq, Gianni Gebbia, Jim O’Rourke, Thurston Moore, Ned Rothenberg, Marilyn Crispell, and many others. His ensemble Beta Foly, based in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, explores the combination of African traditions and new technologies and has performed in seven countries in Africa and Europe. In 2000, he began a collaboration with Maï Lingani, a singer from Burkina Faso.

Shadowglow (TUM CD 006) is improvised music by two very gifted improvisers and composers: Raoul Björkenheim, guitar, and Lukas Ligeti, drums. It is, in Ligeti’s words, “an exploration of spontaneously created timbres and meters coalescing into harmonies and forms we might each have been searching for, but are now
finding.” Those searching for starkly new, extraordinarily original music may find it in Shadowglow. “Everything you hear on this album is fresh,” Ligeti adds. “This is improvised music. Our interplay is conversational. We prefer to have several distinctly different things happening at simultaneously and having these elements maintain precarious yet discernible relationships to one another.”

Both musicians are trained in jazz and classical Western music theory, and they share a keen interest in African and Asian traditional forms of music. All these influences, harnessed to razor sharp intellect and instrumental dexterity, give Shadowglow a sound unlike any other record ever made. Live, Björkenheim and Ligeti continue the conversation begun on Shadowglow, always extending their language while entertaining and nourishing intellectually curious music lovers everywhere.

The duo begins an Eastern U.S. tour in support of  Shadowglow May 21, 2004.

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