"Finally we get to play in London," said Billy Cobham. "I'm so happy." Not as happy as the crowd, who reflected the range of the trio's coverage. Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, Herbie Hancock, Aretha Franklin - that is a small selection of the people these players have worked with. Cobham is also one of the most sampled drummers, and A Tribe Called Quest's The Low End Theory is among the hip-hop built around Ron Carter's bass.
Cobham made it quite clear what he was attempting: "To show how people work in the communicative medium of music and jazz." But the show wasn't a boring jazz lecture. Whatever the trio format lacks in instruments it makes up for in agility and responsiveness. Every time pianist Kenny Barron hinted at a new direction in his soloing, Cobham was there for him, grinning.
A mixture of work in jazz and jazz-rock has made Cobham simultaneously flashy but selfless. He plays silences with as much conviction as beats, knowing that surprise only comes when you leave room for it. On slower tunes (such as Carter's Serenade No 2), his scrunched, smiling face changed at the end of each line, eyebrows up in expectation, then down again as the players landed together. It was like watching a priceless ornament fall from the mantelpiece to be caught an inch above the floor.
Barron's scurrying improvisations were given plenty of rise and fall by this telepathy on faster tunes, but he was richest when he had more space. On I Thought About You, his rhythms were more independent of the other players, and the pauses between beats let the piano ring a little more. His gentle outbursts were thoughtful, almost romantic, but not sweet.
"Goooooo on Ron!" shouted one fan at the beginning of a solo. Not a twitch from the lamppost-tall bass player. To call him cool would be underplaying it. His plucked notes billowed out like sails, almost overwhelming at times. On the rare occasions when he let rip, it was almost like an illusion. He dropped in trills (even a quote from Carmen), and flowed down a run of notes by seemingly just waving his hand across the bass, resting for a few beats afterwards with a little Latin or funk, as if caught briefly in a sampler.
Carter's tune Cut and Paste was a beautiful puzzle. Cobham held on to the mysterious groove while soloing, tickling one of his cymbals from underneath as though it were his pet cat, until eventually he was playing the theme, tuning each drum as he went round by dampening parts of the skins. Carter watched with a little smile, and you could see that, behind his bass, he was circling his hand at Cobham, saying just keep going, don't stop. No one argued with that.
