BJÖRKENHEIM & LIGETI

Raoul Björkenheim and Lukas Ligeti met in 2002 through their mutual friend Henry Kaiser, who had urged them to make music together. Both of them lived in New York City, and soon they were playing duo gigs as well as trio gigs with John Zorn, Henry Kaiser, Ned Rothenburg and Elliot Sharp at NYC venues such as Tonic, the Tank, the Stone and the Living Theater. In 2003 they recorded their first album for TUM, an independent Finnish new music label, and that led to more performances and a tour in the Eastern USA. They discovered a way of improvising together which admits influences beyond jazz, drawing strongly on their interests in African, Asian and other ethnic musics. Björkenheim's colorful guitar playing incorporates extended techniques, alternate tunings and a variety of electronic effects to create, with Ligeti's adventurous multilevel rhythms and textures, a highly personal language which steers away from the reactionary conventions of the jazz and improvising music scenes. Grooves and melodies are allowed, form is sought, and allusions to rock are unrepentant. But an excursion into Zeppelin territory can easily move into totally abstract soundscapes more commonly found in contemporary chamber music, and whispering butterfly wings can give way to a brutal assault by machinery gone haywire.