György Ligeti survived the Holocaust and lived to outfox the oppressive postwar regime in Hungary by producing state-approved folk music compositions (in the mode of his countryman Béla Bartók) while developing his more innovative work in secret. The Russian invasion of 1956 finally caused him to flee to Vienna. Embraced by Stockhausen and the avant-garde, he concentrated on dense, patterned counterpoints he called "micropolyphony" and allowed his penchant for the absurd to inform dozens of surreal, yet approachable, works for piano, orchestra and even one hundred metronomes. Stanley Kubrick's decision to feature Ligeti in the soundtrack for 2001: A Space Odyssey engendered a worldwide ear-opening experience. Ligtei's "awesome powers of invention and assimilation" (The New Yorker) remain the envy of composition students everywhere and the revolution he began so long ago continues this season at Merkin Hall.

For this deeplhy engaging pianist/composer, Jorge Luis Borges' observation that "ambiguity is a richness" has become a personal motto. A progenitor of the Downtown music scene, Coleman unites the discipline of contemporary music with the harmonics and momentum of Klezmer and jazz by keeping sight, in his words, of "the absurdity and tragedy and sense of mission inherent in trying to make the old new and create some sense of cultural continuum." Coleman will appear in concert wiht the luminous English pianist, Stephen Gosling and will be in attendance at the premiere of a new work commissioned by Merkin Concert Hall for the fiery performance collective counter)induction.