Peter Szalai plays North-Indian classical music and is one of the best west-born tabla musicians of our time. The tabla is also a curiosity even among other Indian percussion instruments: it can be tuned to a specific pitch. The many layers of skin and the special finger technique ensures a distinctive poly-rhythmical sound. His masters were Ravi Shankar, Ustad Alla Rakha and Zakir Hussain. He plays classical Indian music since 1980 to this very day. At present he is still a wanted musician for different jazz, world music and fusion productions. He considers teaching at RIMPA (Ravi Shankar Institute for Music and Performing Arts). He was invited to the Hungarian Music Academy where he teaches classical Indian music theory for classical and jazz music students since 2009.