Part of MPS’s groundbreaking ‘Jazz Meets the World’ series, this 1967 album combines the Basel Carnival tambour and jazz drumming traditions. The Basel tambour band of Alfred Sacher and Georges Mathys’ assemblage of top fife players join up with four internationally renowned Swiss jazz drummers. Presiding over the gathering: pianist-composer-arranger George Gruntz, ‘the perfect mediator’. Sacher’s drum corps lead off with the traditional march D’Reemer (the Romans), a piece whose origins are shrouded in the mist of time. Composed by Gruntz, the title piece introduces the four Swiss jazz drummers. The theme integrates tambour and jazz drum traditions before the four solos – Charlie Antolini professes the swing style of Buddy Rich, Daniel Humair exhibits his ‘melodic’ approach, Pierre Favre shows restraint and a love of symbol colors, and Mani Neumeier takes an eclectic multi-perussion path. The next section features an Antolini-Favre duo followed by Neumeier-Humair. Then there’s Humair disassembling his drum set, a climactic quartet duel, and back to the tambour style. Hightime Keepsakes features Gruntz’s quintet with Favre on drums. The piece runs through a series of motifs and features Nathan Davis’ stunning soprano sax solo. On Intercourse, jazz and the drum corps converse, with the tambour drums trading places with Antolini halfway through each of the bass, trumpet, and sax solos, while on Change of Air the Basel fifers play together with Humair and the jazz rhythm section. Based on lanquenet Marches from the 1499 Swabian War, Gruntz’s Sketches for Percussion exploits the myriad percussive possibilities by combining the tambour and jazz drummers in various groupings. Retraite Celeste (Heavenly Retreat) ends the album in a folkloric tour de force, as the full jazz ensemble along with the Basel drummers and fifers create a finely woven asymmetric percussive tapestry. Joachim E. Berendt captured the album’s importance: “The musical breath of the times swings in records such as these.”