Billy @ Ronnie Scott's

Hey has anyone over there in Jolly Old gone to any of these shows ? would love to hear about them if anyone is/has attended ! Peace, TED

Winning set for man in the sweatband
By Jack Massarik, Evening Standard 22.02.08 More reviews by Jack Massarik
Billy Cobham: Music keeps him young


Good to see Ronnie's respectably full last night for a hard-centred double-bill by a bright young British quintet and an iconic American drummer-bandleader whose CV includes almost every superstar (Horace Silver, Miles Davis, John McLaughlin, the Brecker Brothers) on your all-time-great list.

"I first played here in 1968," confessed Billy Cobham, a jazz-rock pioneer who powered McLaughlin's earth-shaking groups and introduced lavishly expanded showkits to stadium stages.

A living legend and a remarkably athletic figure at the drums, a tennis sweatband ringing his gleaming head, he looked ageless and superfit.

Music obviously keeps him young, and world-jazz is his natural habitat. Though raised in the States, Cobham was born in Panama, is now based in Switzerland and calls his latest group Culture Mix.

Riding his tough Afro-funk or sinuous samba beats, Junior Gill's steel pans, Marco Fadola's flashy conga-drums, guitarist Jean-Marc Ecay's edgy guitar and Jukis Uotila's sparkling synthwork provided a feast of local colour. The most popular solo, though, came from Fender-bassist Mike Mondesir, a Londoner very much at home in this international field.

Empirical, a big hit at the international jazz-education conference in Toronto earlier this month, opened the show confidently.

Their themes, marked by unexpected tempo changes and ruminative near-silences, were stylish and original.

Pianist Kit Downes and drummer Shane Forbes are high-class performers, with trumpeter Jay Phelps and altoist Nathaniel Facey not far behind. All, including new bassist Tom Farmer, sounded better for gaining familiarity with such complex material. A rebooking seems certain.

Ted E. Bear wrote:...and Jukis Uotila's ...

Last time I met Jukis was in 1987 at the loby of a hotel in Leverkusen (near Cologne - Germany) were we both were doing our check-in to play at the Jazz Festival there, a very huge and great festival. He was playing with Randy Brecker, with him on DRUMS and I was playing with my band.

Good to see that his carrear has also expanded to the keyboards!

Best regards,

He sounds like another multi-talented musician, a la Gary Husband, Alex. I hope Billy brings this new Culture Mix lineup to new York so I can hear them live.

But so far, Bill is scheduled to do a week at the Blue Note with the current Spectrum - Auger, Bailey and Brown in Sept. of this year.

I really do miss the calendar feature from his website. Wish he would get that going again. Peace, TED

Hi Ted and Alex,

Since I come from the same country as Jukkis Uotila and have seen this man many times on both drums and piano I check his website (www.jukkis.com) on a regular basis. Gary Husband comes to my mind also when speaking about Jukkis. In the 80’s he made two good fusion albums Avenida (1987) and Jukkis Uotila Band Live (1990) with Mike Stern and the late Bob Berg among others. On Jukkis' homepage there’s video clips of him both at the piano and at the drums. Here are some I watched:

http://www.jukkis.com/video/video.php?id=2 (at the paino, 2001, his own composition "Clinic")

http://www.jukkis.com/video/video.php?id=5 (piano solo, 2002 with Randy Brecker)

http://www.jukkis.com/video/video.php?id=11 (at the drums, 1989 with Mike Stern, Bob Berg)

http://www.jukkis.com/video/video.php?id=1 (open drum solo, 2001)


Kind regards,
Anders