Lukas Ligeti

Lukas Ligeti’s compositions draw on diverse traditions including New York experimentalism, electronic music, jazz, African influences, and the European avant-garde. His music shows an interest in musical processes, complex polymetric structures and intercultural collaboration, with many of his works arising out of his deep, long-term engagement with the music of Africa. An established percussionist, especially in the fields of jazz and free improvisation, Lukas Ligeti has long worked with live electronics and has initiated numerous intercultural musical projects, such as his European-African electronica group Burkina Electric.

As a composer, Lukas Ligeti’s output ranges from percussion works, including Pattern Transformation for four marimba players, and ensemble works such as Surroundedness, written for the Viennese ensemble “die reihe”, to his large-scale Suite for Burkina Electric and Orchestra, which the composer premiered with the MDR Symphony Orchestra in Leipzig and interpreted in a revised version with the Brussels Philharmonic in 2021. He has received commissions from the Vienna Festwochen, Austrian Radio, Bang on a Can, Tonhalle Düsseldorf, and from orchestras and ensembles including the American Composers Orchestra, the Tonkünstler Orchestra, Ensemble Modern, Eighth Blackbird, and the Kronos Quartet; his works have been premiered by soloists including Håkan Hardenberger and Colin Currie. He has been featured at festivals including the Festival d’Automne à Paris and the London Southbank Centre’s Meltdown Festival. He gives solo concerts on electronic percussion worldwide.

Lukas Ligeti was artist-in-residence at Sonoscopia in Porto and at the POLIN Museum for the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw; a CD recording of the work realised there, That Which Has Remained... That Which Will Emerge..., was released by col legno. A whole series of works were premiered in 2022: Aquifères was launched by soloist Sofia Gantois (flute) and the Ensemble Hopper in Liège; the Ensemble Reconsile interpreted Actaonella in Vienna – the American premiere followed in February 2023 with the Ensemble New Music Network in Philadelphia. In Essen, Ensemble BRuCH together with Burkina Electric premiered Égal, pas pareil, nonpareil. Réflections sur badenya, fadenya, communauté et convivialité.

In the current season, a number of other works will be premiered: a new composition for headphone orchestra, Burkina Electric, and the Ensemble BRuCH will be heard at the Moers Festival on 26 and 29 May. A duo programme with pianist Nicolas Nomodadze will be launched at the Budapest Music Center on 27 May. The Ligeti Quartet will perform a new string quartet at the Aldeburgh Festival on 23 June and in the next season, on 1 March 2024, with Aris Quartet at the Liederhalle Stuttgart. Other works will be performed, some of them for the first time, at the Konzerthaus Freiburg, in a portrait concert at the Musikhochschule Hamburg, at the Ostrava Days in the Czech Republic, at the Culturescape Festival Basel, and in Bologna; the pianist Shoko Kawasaki has the solo piano work Trinity in her repertoire on a major recital tour with numerous stops in Japan as well as at the Gasteig in Munich, and the Amaryllis Quartet will perform the German premiere of the string quartet Moving Houses in Bremen as well as in Lübeck and Hamburg. In 2023, Lukas Ligeti will also be co-curator of the Oluzayo Festival, which will take place as part of the African Futures conference in Cologne, and artistic director of the World Music Days in Johannesburg on the occasion of the centenary of the International Society for New Music.

Lukas Ligeti studied composition and percussion at the University for Music and Performing Arts in Vienna, where his tutors included Erich Urbanner and Kurt Schwertsik. He also studied with George Crumb, Jonathan Harvey, and John Zorn, among others. In 1998, he moved to the USA; after many years in New York, he was Professor of Composition, Improvisation, and Technology at the University of California, Irvine until 2021. He currently divides his time between Miami and South Africa, where he received his PhD from the University of the Witwatersrand (Johannesburg) in 2020 and holds an honorary professorship at the University of Pretoria. He has been the recipient of numerous awards and scholarships, including the CalArts Alpert Award in Music (2010) and the Förderpreis of the City of Vienna (1990). 

2022/23 season

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