Tabla

Peter Brötzmann's Die Like a Dog Quartet with Toshinori Kondo, William Parker and Hamid Drake, live at the Total Music Meeting in Berlin in November 1994: two long pieces, Close Up (Man) and Close Up (Woman).

Lonnie Liston Smith's first album under his own name, 1973, straight out of the Pharoah Sanders band and the Thembi sessions where the title track was born on a Fender Rhodes. Cecil McBee, Joe Beck, Badal Roy on tabla, Mtume on congas, a tamboura. Six pieces, produced by Bob Thiele for Flying Dutchman.

Donaueschingen, October 1979. Karl Berger brought the orchestra of his Creative Music Studio from Woodstock to the German contemporary music festival, and Südwestfunk and MPS recorded it. The roster reads like the CMS guest book: Don Cherry on trumpet and bamboo flute, Lee Konitz on alto, Oliver Lake on alto, soprano and flute, George Lewis on trombone, Leroy Jenkins on violin, Trilok Gurtu on tabla and congas, Peter Apfelbaum on drums and baritone, Ingrid Sertso singing, Berger on vibes and pia…

Wolfgang Dauner's 1967 SABA septet: Jean-Luc Ponty on violin, Gerd Dudek on tenor and clarinet, Eberhard Weber on cello, Jürgen Karg on bass, and two drummers, Mani Neumeier and Fred Braceful. Mingus-like themes that dissolve into free playing, Neumeier on tabla for the Spanish disguise. Out of print for forty years.

Another of Berendt's meetings, SABA 1967. George Gruntz, the Basel pianist who would later run the Berlin Jazz Festival for twenty years, with Sahib Shihab on saxophones and Jean-Luc Ponty on violin, and a group of Tunisian musicians: a bendir and darbuka drum ensemble and Salah El Mahdi on ney flute. The title turns Dizzy Gillespie's tune on its head. UK Vibe, reviewing the Nicola Conte compilation that includes Djerbi, points out that the famous names are not the point: it is the lesser-known …

Villingen, 23 October 1967. Irène Schweizer's trio with Mani Neumeier and Uli Trepte, a year before Guru Guru, meets Dewan Motihar's sitar, tabla and tambura, with Manfred Schoof and Barney Wilen. Three pieces, two of them long, and the seventeen-minute Sun Love. All About Jazz calls it an unqualified success.

Tip! This is the one and only Martin Denny diving into the highly exotic sounds of India. Originally released in 1968 on Liberty Records, A Taste of India stands as one of the best later Denny's work. Here the king of Exotica injects his gorgeous instrumental arrangements with tons of sitars and tanpuras as the main ingredients of another stylized sound trip. The album highlights include a memorable version of The Strawberry Alarm Clock's Incense and Peppermints and Denny's own masterpiece Hypno…

Hindustani bansuri music by Steve Gorn, with Samir Chatterjee (tabla) and Annalisa Adami (tanpura), in memory of his teacher Gour Goswami. Recorded on 24 March 1996 at Sender Freies Berlin.

ECM :rarum I: two CDs compiled by Keith Jarrett from his ECM recordings of 1974-1994, solo piano, clavichord, pipe organ, the overdubbed Spirits, the European Quartet and the Standards trio. Released 2002.

Keith Jarrett alone on electric guitars, Fender bass, drums, tablas, percussion, voice, recorder and some piano, in twenty untitled overdubbed pieces recorded at his Cavelight Studio, New Jersey, in 1986. Double CD, ECM, 2013.

Keith Jarrett alone on flutes, recorders, tablas, percussion, soprano saxophone, guitar, piano and voice, overdubbed in 26 short pieces. Recorded May to July 1985 at his Cavelight Studio, New Jersey; first released by ECM in 1986.

3-CD box collecting Codona's three ECM albums (Codona, Codona 2, Codona 3) by Collin Walcott, Don Cherry and Naná Vasconcelos, recorded at Tonstudio Bauer, Ludwigsburg, in 1978, 1980 and 1982, produced by Manfred Eicher.

Oregon's 1987 ECM album, the first after Collin Walcott's death: Ralph Towner (guitars, piano, synthesizer), Paul McCandless (oboe, cor anglais, soprano sax), Glen Moore (double bass) and Trilok Gurtu (tabla, percussion). Recorded March 1987 at Tonstudio Bauer, Ludwigsburg.

Collin Walcott's first album as leader, released by ECM in 1976: Walcott on sitar and tabla with John Abercrombie (guitar), Dave Holland (double bass) and Jack DeJohnette (drums), recorded in March 1975 at Tonstudio Bauer, Ludwigsburg.

Ghazal, Kayhan Kalhor (kamancheh) and Shujaat Husain Khan (sitar, vocals) with Sandeep Das (tabla), in three Persian and Indian improvisations recorded live by Swiss radio DRS in Bern on 28 May 2001, released by ECM in 2003.

Steve Tibbetts (guitars, percussion) with Marc Anderson and Marcus Wise (percussion, tabla) and Jim Anton (bass). Recorded in St. Paul, Minnesota, in 2001 and released by ECM in 2002.

Jan Garbarek album of 15 original pieces, many first written for film and ballet, with Rainer Brüninghaus, Eberhard Weber, Marilyn Mazur, Manu Katché, Trilok Gurtu and Mari Boine. Recorded June 1995, Rainbow Studio, Oslo. ECM 1585, 1996.

Jan Garbarek (tenor and soprano saxophone), Anouar Brahem (oud) and Ustad Shaukat Hussain (tabla), recorded August 1992 at Rainbow Studio, Oslo, produced by Manfred Eicher. ECM 1515, released 1994.

Zakir Hussain (tabla, percussion, voice) with Hariprasad Chaurasia (flutes), John McLaughlin (acoustic guitar) and Jan Garbarek (tenor and soprano saxophones), recorded December 1986 at Rainbow Studio, Oslo, produced by Manfred Eicher. ECM, 1987.

Album by Egberto Gismonti (8-string guitar, piano, kalimba, wood flute, voice) with Naná Vasconcelos, Ralph Towner, Collin Walcott and Jan Garbarek, dedicated to the Xingu of the Amazon and recorded at Talent Studio, Oslo, in November 1977.