Modal Tapestry

This disc is more in the nature of jazz-influenced mood music than anything else, and a long way from the normally strict Hindustani tradition followed by Ken Zuckerman, a sarod (lute) player and student of Ali Akbar Khan. This live recording, using musicians from the SWR Symphony Orchestra and a number of top class session players, is of a cross-cultural project conceived by the Zuckerman for the German Südwestrundfunk, who partly financed this recording. It starts off with an alap-like slow introduction, with a few trumpet noodles over the top, followed by a couple of gat-like tunes led by the sarod (‘Wandering’ parts one and two). ‘Improvisation Sa-Ni-Sa’ moves to a more jazzy take on things, with an extended trumpet solo by Jalalu-Kalavert Nelson and, after a rather tedious ambient section, we return to a South Asian feel with the considerably more lively tracks seven and eight, an improvisation in ‘Raga Nat Bhairo’ and a tabla solo. There is some great playing here from Zuckerman and Anindo Chatterjee on tabla.

Things just get better from here on in, with the fast unison playing on ‘A Hero’s Welcome’ being well worth a listen, and there is some great horn playing from Benno Trautmann on ‘Jhala a la Spagna’. Things finish in fine style with a unison tihayi (a device used by Hindustani musicians of a cadential pattern repeated three times) and the audience certainly seem to have enjoyed the performance. In general this is a bit of a mixed bag. There’s some great playing (especially from Zuckerman and the brass) but a fair number of inconsequential passages make the whole definitely less than the sum of its parts.