Nobu Stowe, Alan Munshower, Badal Roy

An Die Musik is a 2008 Soul Note album by the Japanese pianist Nobu Stowe, built from what he calls total-improvisations: ten pieces made on the spot in duo with drummer Alan Munshower and in trio with tabla player Badal Roy, closed by Stowe's own short Pochi. As Budd Kopman explained in All About Jazz, the term means inventing coherent, recognisable melodies inside an improvised flow, an idea Stowe links to Keith Jarrett, and the liner note insists that no pre-composed material was used.

Stowe plays a Mason & Hamlin Model BB piano, Munshower is the drummer of Stowe's Trio Ricochet, and Roy plays tabla and adds his voice. The duos and trios alternate, with a Solo Tabla near the end and the twelve-minute Trio III at the centre. Kopman noted that Roy could not bring his full set of tuned drums, so the trios stay harmonically static against a very cool groove, while the duos leave the piano more exposed; he concluded that "when judged on its own terms, Stowe has created a very successful work". Lyn Horton, also in All About Jazz (2008), heard the opening Duo I as "a restfully melodic and dramatic three-minute piano and drum duet", followed Stowe close to boogie-woogie in Duo V, and observed that Munshower lets loose only once, in Trio VI. Horton also heard the run of fast and slow pieces as a set of movements rather than separate tracks.

Soul Note CD 121397-2, first released in 2008.