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Jazzwise Sneak Peek

By Jazzwise Mag

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https://covver.com/magazine/jazzwise/jazzwise-sneak-peek
Published
Mar 19, 2025
Pages
10
Language
English

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  • Jazz se BILLYCOBHAM Brings Spectrum ON W
  • 18 Jazzwise ▪ July 2024Billy's Full Spectrum Dominance
  • Page 3N Mahavishnu's intensity, tremendous volume, challenging time signatures and sheer velocity of execution forced Cobham, as he would later admit, to compete physically in terms of stamina and speed, his performances a vital element in the success of musicians contemplate in how-does-he-do-it wonder. With the fiftieth anniversary of the release of his hit album Spectrum last year he has once again returned to the touring circuit, and UK audiences will have an opportunity of seeing a living legend as he headlines at the Love Supreme Festival on Saturday 6 July and at his 80th birthday celebration at the EFG London Jazz Festival on Wednesday 20 November at the Queen Elizabeth Hall.
  • Page 4Bobby Colomby, there was a whole bunch of them, Al Foster, the list goes on, all working their way to graduation. Warren Smith was a teacher there, a great percussionist with Gil Evans. It was perfect for me, not only was it a music school but it was also an art school, so the late Jeremy Steig, known for being proficient playing the flute, was actually a painter. He was studying painting, but he was a good flute player, made some great records. In a situation like in High School, the requirement was that you play together with your colleagues, and to be really good at contributing as a participant; so therefore my foundation was very strong. They had Billy Cobham, who was a sensation, he could create these kind of pyrotechnic things people had never heard before and when Michael Brecker soloed it was so far ahead!"
  • Page 5lot of time if you have a front line of - hypothetically - Joe Henderson, J.J Johnson and Freddie Hubbard. The thank-yous you get are not in words. When someone calls you on the phone and asks you, 'Are you free tomorrow for a session that starts at 10am, probably a double session, that's your thank-you for the things which you did before. They don't say, 'that sounds good, no, they ask you to come tomorrow. That's it. "After while I grew stale, and things were changing anyway because of rock n' roll, so I ended up on the road with a series of things I felt I could be a better contributor at"
  • Page 6BACK WITH A BANG! Neil Cowley has decided to re-form his famous trio after performing and recording as a solo artist for seven years. Here he tells Andy Robson why, and what he hopes to achieve...
  • Page 7Neil Cowley was born to a caring, nurturing mum after she had a brief affair with Max Miller's musical director. His father, who led a trio, never told his own family of their half-brother's existence. So, there were secrets within secrets for Cowley. "Every fortnight he would call from a phone box, tell me a joke and the pips would go before he got to the punch line. And every couple years we'd go to Brighton (to meet him)."
  • TURNING POINT"Clark Terry's sound, his phrasing, his articulation, wasn't like anything I had ever heard before." The trumpeter and Banger Factory Records boss Mark Kavuma tells Brian Glasser that it's an album by Clark Terry and Thelonious Monk that changed his life hen I knew that I was going to do this [interview], I thought "There can only be onel'
  • Album InterviewNubya Garcia Odyssey
  • SUBSCRIBE TO jazzwiseNever miss an issue of the UK's only print and digital jazz magazine Jazzwise has been at the heart of the global jazz scene since the magazine's launch in 1997, changing the way jazz publications look and think for the last three decades, with a stunning editorial and design package that reaches out worldwide to both the new jazz audience and established fans - qualities that have led to it winning Jazz Publication of the Year at the Parliamentary Jazz Awards, the Ronnie Scott's Jazz Awards and the Jazz FM Awards.
Text of this page

18 Jazzwise ▪ July 2024

Billy's Full

Spectrum Dominance

Remarkably, Billy Cobham turned 80 in May but

- with a busy year of touring including a headline spot at this year's Cheltenham Jazz Festival -you wouldn't know it. Ahead of all that, he opens up to Stuart Nicholson in an exclusive interview, covering his early life in military bands, tours with Horace Silver, getting fired from the Mahavishnu Orchestra, and his classic jazz-rock album Spectrum was fired from Mahavishnu," says drum legend Billy Cobham matter-of-factly. After the band played Detroit on 23 December 1973, the musicians went their separate ways. McLaughlin, chastened by the experience, set about regrouping in early 1974.

"It was time for me to be gone," continues Cobham. "Even though I was told I was going to be in the band, the next thing I knew my last cheque bounced, and I got a message saying, 'you're no longer with us'; that's the way management works, and still does today I guess."

It was a strange ending for a band whose music had, in the space of three short years, redefined the possibilities of jazz-rock. While guitarist John McLaughlin brought a stunning technique and a deep harmonic understanding to the music - "I was conscious of what I wanted to do, the way I wanted to play, nobody else was doing," he told weekly newspaper Melody Maker - Billy Cobham was similarly taking jazz drumming to the next level. If Tony Williams had been the drummer of the 1960s, then Cobham raised the bar with performances such as 'Meeting of the Spirits' from Mahavishnu's debut Inner Mounting Flame and 'One Word' from follow-up Birds of Fire, become the undisputed drummer of the 1970s.

That's how Weather Report came together, that's how Mahavishnu came together, that's how Eleventh House came together - just co-operations just for the hell of it, and for the love it //