Summit by George Brooks

A past Grammy winner (with Mickey Hart) and a 2002 Grammy nominee (with John McLaughlin and their group Remember Shakti), he is the principle accompanist for all of India's most treasured concert artists including Shivkumar Sharma and Ali Akbar Khan. He has graced the world's most important stages and collaborated with jazz greats Charles Lloyd, Joe Henderson, Pharaoh Sanders,Tito Puente and musical super-luminaries Van Morrison, George Harrison, Yo-Yo Ma and Ravi Shankar.

Trap drummer Steve Smith has a resume that stretches from Ahmad Jamal, Larry Coryell and Steps Ahead to Mariah Carey, Savage Garden and Journey. It is no surprise that he won Modern Drummer Magazine's #1 All Around Drummer award five years in a row and was voted one of the Top 25 Drummers of All Time in a recent Modern Drummer readers' poll.

Born of a Chilean mother and Pakistani father, guitarist Fareed Haque brings his natural eclecticism to a wide variety of jazz and classical artists

including Paquito D'Rivera, Cassandra Wilson, Kurt Elling, Lester Bowie, Arturo Sandoval, Nigel Kennedy, Edgar Meyer, Bob James, Dave Holland, Sting, Javon Jackson, Joe Henderson and Joe Zawinul.

On bass is Kai Eckhardt, a young virtuoso and already a veteran of global fusion music. Raised in Germany and Liberia, Kai came to the Berklee College of Music where he was immediately swept onto the international scene. His recordings with the John McLaughlin Trio and

Trilok Gurtu are already classics of global fusion. Kai and Fareed are both members of Jam Band extraordinaire, Garaj Mahal.

Some comments form the press about george brooks and his music....

"The music on this recording has blown me away. Brooks plays the saxophone with a tone,rhythmic concept and harmonic concept that soundstotally new to my ears.The result is one of the most exciting saxophone records I have ever heard." SAXOPHONE JOURNAL

Bristling with east meets west polytonality and rhythmic intrigue and tinged with a Trane-like spirituality... Blowing gorgeous tones and

fluidly unravelling complex ideas...he succeeds to a startling and almost rapturous degree." SAN FRANCISCO BAY GUARDIAN

" A fascinating set...Exotically lyrical...gracefully bridges seemingly antithetical disciplines.

BILLBOARD MAGAZINE Critics Choice

"Able to play in the tradition of Coltrane and Dexter Gordon one moment and with Terry Riley or Kronos Quartet the next Brooks is fast becoming a leading voice in the realm where jazz and north Indian

improvisation meet." SAN FRANCISCO BAY GUARDIAN

".what makes Summit so captivating is Brooks' huge, wonderfully dense but pliable sound. Inspired by Dexter Gordon's thick, liquid tone, Brooks took to practicing one note at a time, and in his quest to endow each note with its own particular resonant character, he discovered the fundamental cellular connection between jazz and Indian music.

Summit's percussion section is a dream team featuring powerhouse jazz drummer Steve Smith and tabla master Zakir Hussain, the son of legendary tabla player Ustad Alla Rakha. A founding member of the seminal 1970s Indian/jazz fusion band Shakti with John McLaughlin, Hussain has been a major force in world music for a quarter century. Besides running the school founded by his father in Bombay and composing for both Bollywood and Hollywood, he maintains an exhausting schedule of international performances.

"Sometimes you get the ideal mix, the best dish, the perfect mix of spices - I felt that way about Shakti and I feel that way about Summit," Hussain said from his office at his label, Moment Records.

Andrew Gilbert-SAN DIEGO UNION TRIBUNE

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