JAZZ REVIEW : Cobham Delivers a Rough Set

When you go to see Billy Cobham, you expect to hear drums--lots of drums. His opening-night performance at Catalina’s Tuesday was dominated by a set of traps that looked massive enough to energize the entire Moscow Circus.

Fortunately, Cobham is also an adroit musician who usually--but not always--understands the difference between percussive tonalities and rhythmic decibels. To his credit, on this evening he leaned more toward the former.

But Cobham’s technical skills, adroit as they are, were not enough to sustain a program that clearly had not had adequate preparation. The drummer joked frequently throughout his first set about the rough, erratic nature of the music. Despite his well-meant intention to put a happy face on the proceedings, a performance is a performance, and a rehearsal is a rehearsal. And the audience was paying for a performance.

The evening’s best moments were almost always the result of individual rather than group efforts: bassist Jeff Berlin’s articulate soloing on “Reggae Woman” and “Summer Band Camp,” T Lavitz’s funk-drenched keyboards on a closing original blues, Cobham’s nonstop energy flow.

Only on “Laid Back Life Style” did one sense the potentially productive interplay that might exist among these three sterling players, given sufficient time to establish a musically productive working relationship.

Cobham, Lavitz and Berlin continue at Catalina’s through Sunday night.