Billy Cobham, the drummer who helped invent jazz fusion, brings his septet Time Machine to the Barbican Hall for a night of his own catalogue and the standards that shaped it.
Billy Cobham, who helped invent jazz fusion drumming in the early 1970s, brings his septet Time Machine to the Barbican Centre on Monday 23 November 2026.
Born in Colón, Panama, in 1944 and raised in New York, Cobham played with Miles Davis on the electric albums at the turn of the 1970s. He then joined John McLaughlin in the Mahavishnu Orchestra, playing a kit twice the ordinary size.
He went into the Modern Drummer hall of fame in 1987 and has led his own bands ever since. The fusion albums he made under his own name in the mid-1970s have since been sampled by two generations of producers.
At 82, he still tours. Jazz Cafe presents the night in the Barbican Hall, a much larger room than Union Chapel, where he played last year.
Gary Husband on keyboards and Rocco Zifarelli on guitar are among the septet’s seven players. The programme mixes his own catalogue with jazz and soul standards.