Bozzio/Cobham Collaboration JAPAN 2008
17/11/2008




 

TOKYO, JAPAN “STB139”                                                                        11/16/08

This was the last playing day for me in Japan and turned out to be all that I had expected and a little bit more as this was an impromptu duet between Terry Bozzio and me. Tom Coster joined Terry and I in the second part of the presentation which added a third dimension that was unique in it’s own way and binding. The presentation was totally spontaneous from all of us except for the encore. I am glad that I have had experiences in performance where I had to pull some musical rabbits out of an invisible hat and hope that I could knit together my thoughts with some sort of disciplined purpose and direction. This was one of those nights where we were all required to do just that. As you will be able to see from the photo gallery here, Terry’s performance environment is quite extensive with much drums and gongs and even a kitchen sink buried inside one of the bass drums (I wouldn’t be surprised) just to have one more unique sound somewhere close by although, I couldn’t see it I’m convinced it’s there for sure. He definitely makes good use of every stitch of percussion surface one sees and hears on stage. He started things off with softly played patterns on the cymbals and expanded from there. It was easy for me to enhance what was musically offered because we were playing with a minimum of monitor support and the room was quite user friendly to our performance. I wanted to be sure that I could hear and feel the notes emanating from his drum set in relation to my set. This was a very good thing as I had been playing with ‘in-ear’ monitors for the past few days and had a more electronic perspective of the kit to that point. It was good to feel the Phoenix drums in this set up and experience how easy it was to play them, once again showing the unique character of these drums. The show was about 2+ hours with a short break. As I said above, it all was about connecting in real time as we improvised on the ideas we provided each other. At the end I felt that a corner had been turned and a corner stone laid, as I had not really performed with Terry in this way so this was the look around the corner to see if this idea was possible and it is. With the theory now a reality, we can pull some things together that will make a positive impact in the music industry leaving much food for thought.  But, for this time is of the essence………. The reason I have saved the encore for last is because that’s where it normally appears. After all the interactive collaborations it felt good to play something that the three of us knew………….. Kind of.

At sound check, Terry was playing his chromatic toms and came up with the theme from a Joe Zawinul: called“Directions”. When we came back for the encore, I thought it appropriate to cap the whole presentation with this piece as it represented the only identifiable melody in the show. A perfect way to end the day: Order through Chaos!

BC



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