The Rain
Ghazal

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Scientists researching telepathy would find living proof in this fourth installment of the cross-cultural collaboration between Persian and Indian traditional-music masters. The Rain is a breathtaking improvisational journey, and not in the least because Kayhan Kalhor and Shujaat Hussain Khan -- on kemancheh and sitar, respectively -- come to the music from two different, highly regimented traditions. Recorded live for Swiss radio, The Rain is aptly titled, as each gossamer strain of strings shimmers in a mist of spontaneous music-making. Some passages fall steadily, with the quiet plink and pitter-pat of tablaist Sandeep Das underscoring the melancholic sawing of Kalhor's fiddle.

A sunshower of notes from Khan opens the window; a low roll of tabla thunders; and the three are off on a storm of lightning runs crackling up and down the fretboards of their ancient instruments. Earlier meetings of this duo were studies in silence and grace, but Ghazal's subsequent touring and recordings allow for all kinds of new expressions. The ease with which the virtuoso from Tehran and his partner settle into an imagined Central Asian cutting contest may remind listeners of a jazz session, and The Rain boasts a light, buoyant swing that followers of this pathbreaking duo will find revelatory. Mark Schwartz