Ustad Zakir Hussain is an Indian tabla player, composer, percussionist, music producer and film actor. He is the eldest son of tabla player Alla Rakha. He is widely considered as one of the greatest tabla players of all time.
ECM is an independent record label founded by Karl Egger, Manfred Eicher and Manfred Scheffner in Munich in 1969. While ECM is best known for jazz music, the label has released a variety of recordings, and ECM's artists often refuse to acknowledge boundaries between genres. ECM's motto is "the most beautiful sound next to silence", taken from a 1971 review of ECM releases in Coda, a Canadian jazz magazine.
Kayhan Kalhor is an Iranian Kurdish kamancheh and setar player, and a vocal composer. He has received three Grammy Award for Best Traditional World Music Album nominations. Kalhor also has earned two nominations and won one Grammy Award for Best Global Music Album as a member of the Silk Road Ensemble.
Vishwa Mohan Bhatt, professionally known as V. M. Bhatt, is a Hindustani classical music instrumentalist who plays the Mohan veena.
Badal Roy was an Indian tabla player, percussionist, and recording artist known for his work in jazz, world music, and experimental music.
Manfred Eicher is a German record producer and the founder of ECM Records.
Ghazal is a band formed by Kurdish-Iranian kamencheh player Kayhan Kalhor, Indian sitarist Shujaat Khan, and Indian tabla player Swapan Chaudhuri. Together, they perform music blending North Indian and Persian classical and light classical traditions.
Shujaat Husain Khan is one of the most acclaimed North Indian musicians and sitar players of his generation. He belongs to the Imdadkhani gharana school of music. He has recorded over 100 albums and was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best World Music Album for his work with the band Ghazal with Iranian musician Kayhan Kalhor. He also sings frequently. His style of sitar playing, known as gayaki ang, is imitative of the subtleties of the human voice.
While the sitar had earlier been used in jazz and Indian film music, it was from the 1960s onwards that various pop artists in the Western world began to experiment with incorporating the sitar, a classical Indian stringed instrument, within their compositions.
Cassius Khan, is a Canadian Indian classical musician known for playing the Tabla while singing.
Changes is an album by American jazz pianist Keith Jarrett recorded over two days in January 1983 and released on ECM September the following year. The trio features rhythm section Gary Peacock and Jack DeJohnette, the second release by the long-standing "Standards Trio", the first three of which—Standards, Vol. 1 (1983), Changes and Standards, Vol. 2 (1985)—were all recorded concurrently.
Espirito is the second album by Lawson Rollins. Rollins composed all of the music and co-produced the album with Persian-American musician and producer Shahin Shahida and multi-platinum producer Dominic Camardella. The cast of musicians includes the Grammy-nominated Brazilian singer Flora Purim, percussionist Airto Moreira, Iranian kamancheh player Kayhan Kalhor, and Grammy winners Charlie Bisharat on violin as well as Cuban drummer Horacio Hernandez.
Trios / Solos is an album by American jazz guitarist Ralph Towner with Glen Moore recorded over two days in November 1972 and released on ECM June the following year. The session features guest appearances from tabla player Colin Walcott and oboist Paul McCandless.
Grazing Dreams is the second album by American sitarist and composer Collin Walcott, recorded in February 1977 and released on ECM later that year. Walcott's quintet features trumpeter Don Cherry and rhythm section John Abercrombie, Palle Danielsson and Dom Um Romão.
In Concert 1972 is a double live album by sitar virtuoso Ravi Shankar and sarodiya Ali Akbar Khan, released in 1973 on Apple Records. It was recorded at the Philharmonic Hall, New York City, in October 1972, and is a noted example of the two Hindustani classical musicians' celebrated jugalbandi (duet) style of playing. With accompaniment from tabla player Alla Rakha, the performance reflects the two artists' sorrow at the recent death of their revered guru, and Khan's father, Allauddin Khan. The latter was responsible for many innovations in Indian music during the twentieth century, including the call-and-response dialogue that musicians such as Shankar, Khan and Rakha popularised among Western audiences in the 1960s.
Sandeep Das is an Indian tabla player and composer currently based in Boston, Massachusetts, United States.
Swara Samrat festival is a four-day annual festival of Indian classical music and dance held during the winters in Kolkata, India. This festival is the brainchild of Sarod maestro Pandit Tejendra Narayan Majumdar, his vocalist wife, Manasi Majumder and their Sarod player-son Indrayuddh Majumder. The festival is dedicated to Swara Samrat Ustad Ali Akbar Khan. Indian Classical Music and Dance Legends such as Pandit Shivkumar Sharma, Pandit Birju Maharaj, Pandit Hari Prasad Chaurasia, Pandit Jasraj, Ustad Zakir Hussain, Ustad Aashish Khan, Dr. Girija Devi, Begum Parveen Sultana, Pandit Swapan Chaudhuri, Guru Karaikudi Mani, Ustad Rashid Khan, Shankar Mahadevan, Pandit Budhaditya Mukherjee, Pandit Ulhas Kashalkar, Pandit Venkatesh Kumar, Pandit Ajoy Chakraborty, Pandit Anindo Chatterjee, Pandit Sanjay Mukherjee, Ustad Shahid Parvez, Ustad Shujaat Khan, Pandit Tejendra Narayan Majumdar, Pandit Kushal Das, Pandit Rajendra Gangani, Guru Sujata Mohapatra, Pandit Subhankar Banerjee, Pandit Yogesh Samsi, Pandit Bickram Ghosh, Pandit Tanmoy Bose and Kaushiki Chakraborty are some of the artists who have previously performed in this festival.
The Wind is an album by Iranian kamancheh player Kayhan Kalhor and Turkish bağlama player Erdal Erzincan, recorded in Istanbul in November 2004, mixed at Rainbow Studio in Oslo in 2006 and released on ECM in September later that year. It was their first collaborative album and the result is a set of instrumental compositions that flow into each other like one continuous work.
Ravi Shankar's Festival from India is a double album by Indian musician and composer Ravi Shankar, released on World Pacific Records in December 1968. It contains studio recordings made by a large ensemble of performers, many of whom Shankar had brought to the United States from India. Among the musicians were Shivkumar Sharma, Jitendra Abhisheki, Palghat Raghu, Lakshmi Shankar, Aashish Khan and Alla Rakha. The project presented Indian classical music in an orchestral setting, so recalling Shankar's work as musical director of All India Radio in the years before he achieved international fame as a soloist during the 1960s.
Lost Songs of the Silk Road is the debut album by Ghazal, a trio made up of Iranian and Indian musicians. Swapan Chaudhuri played the tabla, Kayhan Kalhor played the kamancheh, and Shujaat Khan played the sitar. The album was released in 1997.
