Barry Altschul

Barry Altschul is a free jazz drummer who gained fame in the late 1960s with the pianists Paul Bley and Chick Corea. In the early '70s, Barry Altschul was the drummer for Circle -- a band that (with a membership that also included Chick Corea, Dave Holland, and Anthony Braxton) might possibly have been the most technically adept free jazz ensemble ever. Altschul's drumming with that band was stylistically all-encompassing -- in his own words, "from ragtime to no time" -- thanks to his background in traditional jazz styles