Billy Cobham Charts Variety Into His Drumming

Because jazz is primarily an improvisational art, it’s rare to find a top-level jazz artist who performs with written arrangements. Although many musicians feel reading on stage restricts performances, drummer Billy Cobham sees it differently.

The advantage of using charts, Cobham believes, is that he can enlarge the scope of his show. If a band works without music, he says it’s limited to previously rehearsed and memorized material--or familiar standards and jazz classics.

Cobham, heralded for his precise yet explosive work with Miles Davis in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s and with John McLaughlin’s Mahavishnu Orchestra from 1971-73, wants more than that.

“We don’t just memorize the material on a tour and then let it go,” says Cobham, referring to bassist Brian Bromberg, keyboardist Joey Chindamo, who, along with saxophonist Ernie Watts, will be with the drummer when he plays the Palomino tonight and the Long Beach Jazz Festival on Saturday.

“Some days we try different tunes,” says the 47-year-old artist, whose most recent album is “Picture This” on GRP Records. “That way we stay fresh. When I write something new, we just read it and play. That way the band continues to grow and become cohesive as a unit.”

The leader describes the band’s performances as acoustic mainstream jazz stretching into the contemporary arena--with the occasional use of synthesizers. “We play some things that are what you’d call ‘jazz/fusion’ and others that are just funky,” he says. “But we’re definitely doing a lot more than (just playing the melody) and then taking solos. We do a lot of (spontaneous playing of the same phrase or rhythm), like organizational soloing. It’s interesting.”

Cobham, Bromberg and Chindamo are in the midst of a monthlong tour that began in late July in the San Francisco Bay Area and will finish later this month, when the band--with Watts--plays the premiere of the Playboy Jazz Festival in Japan, with concerts in Tokyo and Fukuoka. Earlier this year the foursome gathered in Rome, where Cobham began recording a new album that will be completed by December.

Unlike previous efforts by Cobham, who currently doesn’t have a record deal, he plans to complete this album without record company backing. “I want to have a finished product ready to give to a company with whom I’ll sign a distribution deal,” he says.

Cobham, who has lived near Zurich, Switzerland, since 1984, explains why he’s reluctant to seek label financing. Very few record executives, he complains, actually play music and consequently don’t understand it. He finds this frustrating.

“(Non-musical) executives are going by what they feel will sell rather than by what the music stands for and what it can generate (emotionally),” he says. “Musicians, on the other hand, are often willing to work on a worthy project for little money. That sort of cooperative attitude is what’s missing from many record companies.”