Billy Cobham goes big for Orchestral 80th Birthday show at Queen Elizabeth Hall

The recent passing of Roy Haynes has reaffirmed the need to hold close and cherish the jazz drum elder statesmen while we still have the chance. Following in the footsteps of the 1940s, 50s and 60s drum giants, few in the 1970s had the enormous, all-engulfing visceral impact that Billy Cobham had in 1971. It was a game-changing moment when the Mahavishnu Orchestra first hit the stage and Cobham’s enormous double-bass-drum driven, open-handed 16th-note hihat and snare drum grooves lit a fire that still burns brightly today.

Now celebrating his 80th year, Billy Cobham arrived at the QEH on Wednesday night for this special birthday concert in tandem with Guy Barker, the massed ranks of the BBC concert Orchestra and the Guy Barker Big Band. Barker has history with Cobham, playing trumpet in his band back in the 1990s and scoring arrangements for Cobham and the HR Big Band in Germany. During the past decade the drummer has talked with Barker about a big desire to perform his music with a symphony orchestra. And what gives this project a head start is the special combination of Cobham's spectacular playing, highly memorable and dynamic compositions and Barker's gift for deeply creative arrangements and orchestration, particularly when the repertoire is drawn from the drummer's imperial period on Atlantic records.

Cobham also brings an extra stick on stage with him tonight, this one though is an elegant walking cane for support, which is perhaps no surprise considering the punishing physical pressure his body has been put through for the past six decades. Accompanying him are his top-flight regulars, Gary Husband on keyboards, electric bassist Michael Mondesir and guitarist Rocco Zifarelli, with whom he has recently been touring his Spectrum album's 50th anniversary, and as Barker summoned the gathering storm of this huge 70-plus piece orchestra, the swell rose up and Cobham's years fell away as he eased into his signature pocket groove on 'Mirage'. His crisp snare articulation and precise tuning across eight rack-toms opened up the dynamic with the orchestra expanding 'Light at the End of a Tunnel' to a brighter level of illumination, Zifarelli and the horns warming up and Barker's movie-soundtrack vision making its presence felt.

Cobham's hymn to his mother country 'Panama' took the filmic arc further with colour, texture and the bass trombone's spooky rumbling widening the dynamic spread, while 'To the Women In My Life' dramatically fleshed out the brief piano interlude from Spectrum. Digging deep into his most acclaimed work, including 'Stratus', 'Crosswinds' and 'Spectrum', Cobham was listening, smiling, reacting and soloing with the alertness, drive and mastery of dynamics of one half his age as the unison themes switched and extended between guitar/keyboards and orchestra, building into lofty cathedrals of sound as the empathy deepened and the horns hit boiling point.

Barker's scoring for the bottom end of his brass section, which took on the moody shudder of a crime thriller soundtrack, was just one of the many highlights of this most remarkable combination of a drum legend, a fusion trio and symphony orchestra yet heard. Bring them back again soon.