Romanian pianist Lucian Ban and American viola player Mat Maneri have produced consistently interesting work in their respective careers, during which they have shuttled between any number of schools in improvised music. They can play as effectively ‘in’ as ‘out’, and this ambitious new offering draws on that strength.

Collaborators for over a decade, notably on Transylvanian Concert, Ban and Maneri have creative chemistry. Diving headfirst into the emotional turmoil of Greek mythology they offer a work of narrative depth and musical imagination in Odeipe Redux.

Largely downtempo, the material is often sternly introspective, with a dark if not disturbing beauty in keeping with the extreme family strife of the subject matter. While Louis Sclavis‘s fraught, spooky bass clarinet and Ralph Alessi‘s noble but plaintive trumpet are often deployed in teasing fragments, Jen Shyu’s and Theo Bleckmann’s vocals bring a richly melodic character to music that feels tailor made for a theatrical production. In fact, the suite is based on George Enescu’s opera Oedipe, where the Greek chorus is of paramount importance, and as this live recording shows, Ban and Maneri skilfully embrace the challenge of translating into sound a tale that still shocks.

A work in which ambition is well matched by execution.