My show is and has always been about leadership, love and life.
Leadership from those spirits who have long since left this planet, and the lessons we can learn from them.
love, for the commitment to musical excellence and letting the power off the orchestra feed off each other. The ability to fit inside any musical setting and crack a joke, play a role or drive consciousness to new heights with pulsating rhythms played for hours in front of sweaty college students who left with new found truths about the interconnectivity between the cosmos and humanity.
Life because it springs eternal and the magic still exists because in that cycle those with big hearts share their experiences with those who dare to seek. To buck the norms of our material society in an effort to seek truth from people we would hear playing music in movie theaters, hockey halls, pizza parlors and army barracks.
My guest today grew up in an age before interconnectivity. His art reflects selflessness, camaraderie and freedom of expression which are the same values I want to promote for my two young daughters and future generations of curious human beings.
There has been no segregation in his music or the musicians. Be it Horace Silver, dreaming with the Brecker brothers, atmospheric sounds with Jan Hammer and Jeremy Steig, finding Snoopy with Leland Sklar and Tommy Bolin, developing the dynamic rhythm sections in the studio and out. Rick Laird, Al Johnson, Ray Barretto, Colin Walcott, Bobby Rodriguez. Then there's the unrelenting tours with George Duke and John Abercrombie, NAMM show jams with Steve Miller, Brazilian Swing with Astrud Gilberto, Grover Washington Jr, Bobby and the Midnights, Freddie Hubbard, John McLaughlin, Milt Jackson and Carlos Santana.
His focus has always remained the same communicate without using his voice and be yourself. Woodshed for hours and leave it all on the stage.
He is about to embark on a tour of the US and Canada to celebrate the 40th anniversary of Spectrum which is an album that still rattles my nervous system going back to the days when I first heard it in Lower Allston, MA.
People Make the World Go Round. Billy Cobham welcome to the JFS.