Zakir Hussain/Dave Holland Trio

India meets Jazz Zakir Hussain (* March 9, 1951 in Bombay, India) is considered the most distinguished living tabla player. In addition to the tabla, Hussain plays the dubious Indian tubular drums dhol, dholak, dholki, and khol, as well as the kettle drum duggi, among others.Outside India, he is best known for his involvement with John McLaughlin's group Shakti, recordings with various percussion ensembles (e.g. Diga Rhythm Band, Planet Drum, Rhythm Experience) and his collaborations with musicians such as George Harrison, Joe Henderson, Van Morrison, Jack Bruce, Tito Puente, Pharoah Sanders, Billy Cobham, Mickey Hart, Trilok Gurtu, and Bill Laswell (Material, Tabla Beat Science).The North Indian musical tradition from which he comes, however, still plays the most significant role in his musical output. As he says himself, he plays 80 percent classical Indian music. The fact that he has long been recognized as a musician in his homeland is also reflected in the fact that he is a sought-after fellow musician of masters such as Ravi Shankar (sitar), Ali Akbar Khan (sarod), Shiv Kumar Sharma (santoor) or the Kathak dancer Birju Maharaj. Dave Holland studied at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and first played with Alexis Korner, then as house bassist at Ronnie Scott's Jazz Club in London, but also explored free jazz in the Spontaneous Music Ensemble of John Stevens and Trevor Watts. After Miles Davis heard him play live at Ronnie Scott's club, he invited Holland to America, but never heard from him after that. Nevertheless, Holland traveled to New York City. There he first met Herbie Hancock, Davis' pianist at the time, who brought him to Miles Davis. Through his participation in his album Bitches Brew, Holland became internationally known. Holland soon played with Chick Corea, Barry Altschul and Anthony Braxton in a trio and quartet. He also released solo albums and a duo record with bass colleague Barre Phillips. At this time he also worked for ECM with John Abercrombie and Jack DeJohnette, who were also influential in the jazz development of the 1970s. This collaboration resumed in the early 1990s with two more albums. He also performed on and off with Karl Berger. Holland is known as a composer with folk song-like motifs, asymmetrical rhythms and two or more part themes (mostly trombone and saxophone).He received an honorary doctorate from Berklee College of Music in 2000. He currently lives in New York. CD Review: A grandiose fusion of jazz and Indo-Oriental music from a true super¬group. They started out as seven, and the "glorious three" remained. It was tabla virtuoso Zakir Hussain who initiated a project with jazz musicians from India plus Dave Holland and Chris Potter for the non-profit organization SFJazz. Under the band name "Crosscurrents" they went on tour as a septet, but then reduced themselves to the musical skeleton of melody, bass, rhythm. The "Crosscurrents Trio" was born. On the debut album, the collective name makes way for the individual names, in alphabetical order: Holland and Hussein, two old masters who have helped shape jazz and its tendencies towards fusion and the dissolution of boundaries for decades; Potter, one of the most distinguished saxophonists of the younger generation. Each of them brings two or three pieces - Holland, sensibly enough, precisely those ("Mazad", "Bedouin Trail") that he already conceived in 1997 for Anouar Brahem's fantastic trio album "Thimar" (with John Surman). The new versions are no more Indian than the Tunisian music of the time was, but here as there they blend into a fascinating Indo-Oriental-tinged world-jazz whole. The two "Westerners" operate with Hussain on a level that knows no genre boundaries. Their soulful internal dialogues with the tabla master are inspired by the "twos" and "fours" (two/four bar changes) of bop as much as by classical Indian music. When sax and bass rock up to the clacking and "hiccup"-like glissandi of his drums, these are "conversations" of the liveliest kind. (FonoForum)


Note: This text was translated by machine translation software and not by a human translator. It may contain translation errors.