Ciro Montanari

Ciro Montanari is an Italian percussionist who teaches online tabla lessons alongside frame drums, darbuka, riq, and tombak. His work sits at the intersection of North Indian classical music and the percussion traditions of the Mediterranean and the Middle East — a combination built over more than two decades of study, performance, and teaching.

He began studying tabla in 2003 with Matteo Scaioli in Ravenna, who introduced him to Pandit Sankha Chatterjee, a master whose style blends three leading tabla gharanas (schools): Farrukhabad, Punjab, and Delhi. Chatterjee studied under Ustad Maseet Khan and Ustad Keramatulla Khan of the Farrukhabad gharana, and later under Ustad Alla Rakha Khan of the Punjab gharana — father of Zakir Hussain. Through frequent journeys to India and study in the traditional manner, Montanari entered a living line of transmission that very few European musicians have reached.

From 2005 to 2009 he deepened this path at the Conservatorio Arrigo Pedrollo in Vicenza, following the Non-European Musical Traditions courses under Federico Sanesi — himself a student of Sankha Chatterjee — and attended seminars at the Fondazione Giorgio Cini in Venice and with Narada Studio. As a performer he recorded Step In! (2016) with French sitar player Denis Teste, moving between Hindustani ragas and an arrangement of Erik Satie’s Gnossienne No. 1, and he is the rhythmic foundation of the SOMA Trio alongside Peppe Frana (oud, Afghan rebab) and Masih Karimi (tanbur, daf); the trio’s debut album SOMA (2023) brings together original compositions and traditional melodies from the Indo-Persian and Middle Eastern worlds.

As a teacher, Montanari passes on rhythm the way he received it — as a language learned through listening, repetition, and dialogue. He teaches at Labyrinth Online, where his courses cover North Indian and Afghan tabla traditions and the tala cycles that govern Hindustani rhythm, alongside Mediterranean and Middle Eastern percussion. His online lessons welcome students from beginner to advanced, whether the goal is entering the tabla tradition or expanding a percussionist’s rhythmic vocabulary.