
Power trio. It’s a tag generally applied to rock acts like the Jimi Hendrix Experience, Cream, or Rush.
Piano trio. It’s a tag generally applied to jazz acts led by the likes of Keith Jarrett, Bill Evans, or Chick Corea.
Beast Mode Trio (beastmodetrio.com) is a South Florida collective that split the differences during its 70-minute show for a three-quarter capacity crowd at Crazy Uncle Mike’s in Boca Raton on Jan. 12. Pianist Tal Cohen, electric bassist Armando Gola and drummer Hollywood, a.k.a Jonathan Joseph, tagged the crowd with equal parts rock thunder and jazz sophistication.
The factors that most fused those disparate approaches were jazz-approved improvisation and the uneven, African mangambe and bikutsi polyrhythms the trio brought into the mix. Picture Jarrett having replaced guitarist Eric Clapton in Cream; creating harmonies with the improvisational bassist Jack Bruce, and with both surging due to the energy of Baker’s often tribal-influenced patterns.
Then, primarily because of the Miami-born Hollywood, picture all of that at double-speed. The trio performed three original compositions and three jazz standards, each close to 10 minutes long, with each also featured on its self-titled forthcoming debut album.
The drummer’s composition “Pinda” opened the show, veering between 9/8 and 6/8 time signatures amid its spot-on stops and restarts. The Australia-born Cohen played the first of several jaw-dropping solos after an introductory break by the ever-inventive Gola, and before one by Hollywood — whose high-degree-of-difficulty flurries, counterintuitively played both clockwise and counter-clockwise around his drum kit — turned heads, drew gasps and silenced conversations.
“Yesterdays,” by Jerome Kern, further broke the ice and boggled the mind. Cohen beautifully stated the chestnut’s timeless melody, and Gola and Hollywood each took banner solos, all in a 7/8 time signature that the trio effortlessly made sound like a standard waltz.
John Coltrane’s “Lonnie’s Lament” furthered that notion. The drummer’s complicated blend of his kick drum, side-stick rimshots on his snare, and hi-hat and crash cymbal accents coaxed memorable solos out of Cohen and Gola, whose use of effects included high-register notes that would make Ren and Stimpy proud. The piece, in 9/8 time, also sounded like a waltz because of the trio’s polyrhythmic subdivisions.
“I previously worked with a gentleman named Richard Bona,” Hollywood said afterward of the gifted Cameroonian bassist. “And he’s the one who introduced me to these African rhythms we’re playing, like mangambe and bikutsi.”
The drummer’s 2015 instructional book, Exercises in African-American Funk (Hudson Music), illustrates these concepts. It was co-authored by the celebrated educator Steve Rucker, his instructor at the University of Miami’s Frost School of Music.
Cohen’s original ballad, “Something Like a Picture,” gave the crowd time to take a breath. Hollywood utilized brushes before switching to drum sticks; the pulse alternated between 4/4 and 6/8 time, and Cohen’s gorgeous solo showcased his own unique individual fusion of Middle Eastern melody and traditional jazz harmony. Having already won a Grammy Award (as have the other two members) while playing with the likes of Terence Blanchard, Joe Lovano, and Greg Osby, the young pianist’s career arc still seems limitless.
The Cuban Gola’s credits include other pianists capable of playing outside the box in Gonzalo Rubalcaba and Eldar Djangirov. And the bassist’s harmonics-driven introduction and solo on “3 Vamps” ignited what would become a two-song fuselage of closing material. Cohen took yet another incomparable solo, and Hollywood’s break over the vamp by Gola and Cohen — no one took an unaccompanied solo all evening — proved his best of several.
The closer was Rodgers and Hammerstein’s classic “My Favorite Things.” Its introduction approximated all three musicians playing in different time signatures before the trio settled into what could best be described as waltzing, 6/8-approximate. No one could’ve known what they were playing until Cohen stated the familiar melody.
As for Hollywood, his nickname has been earned by him being there, doing that. The drummer has recorded and toured with Pat Metheny, Joe Zawinul, Al Jarreau, and David Sanborn, and joined Jeff Beck (1944-2023) as one of the guitarist’s final drummers among a who’s who of modern drummers, playing with him from 2012-2017.
Having only utilized a double-kick drum pedal since playing with the meteoric Beck, previously frustrated that his feet couldn’t keep up with his hummingbird hand speed, Hollywood earned a hooray on this night by upping even his often stratospheric degree of difficulty. The drummer played two cowbells intermittently throughout — one mounted near his hi-hat cymbals and played by hand, the other played with his left foot via yet another pedal.
With its incredible level of advanced technique and musicality, the Beast Mode Trio will have no trouble attracting musicians. Most of the crowd on this night appeared to be players, ranging from garage band amateurs to seasoned professionals. Its biggest challenge will be drawing additional listeners to its barrage of odd time signatures, all likely to render any attempt at dancing as hazardous to one’s health.
But as these three advanced practitioners already know, for instrumental music in general and jazz/fusion in particular, that’s the nature of the beast.