Charlie Kohlhase Explorers Club

Record Release: A Second Life

The Explorers Club holds space for forebears like the great unsung pianist and composer Elmo Hope, whose darkly hued “Eyes So Beautiful as Yours” serves as a bari sax feature, with lush orchestration and tasteful, outside-the-box comping from Hofbauer on guitar. The brass (plus guitar) take the lead initially on the hymn-like “Berlin Ballad” by John Tchicai, followed by reeds, percussion and arco bass. “Man on the Moon,” an obscurity from the Don Cherry/Ornette Coleman universe, is an uptempo rollercoaster, beginning with sci-fi sonic abstraction, then erupting into the main theme (which bears some resemblance to Mingus’s “Boogie Stop Shuffle”). Roswell Rudd’s “Tetractys” provides an ingenious ending: one by one, each player drops out to sing the catchy four-bar line, until the Explorers Club becomes an Explorers Choir, united in harmony and joyous, relaxed swing.

At the ready on alto, tenor and baritone saxophones, the venerated Boston-based improviser and composer Charlie Kohlhase ascends the proverbial podium to lead his Explorers Club on the new Mandorla Music release A Second Life. Behind the title is a tale of survival, as Kohlhase reveals that he became infected with HIV in 2015. “I feel like I am living a ‘second life’ now,” he writes in his liner notes, “and am grateful for the excellent medical treatment that I’ve received here in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. This album is dedicated to the 40 million people who have died of AIDS without the benefit of modern treatment, which in some parts of the world continues today, and particularly to those closest to me: Brian Combs, Lionel Cuffie, Barry Savage and Calvan Vail.”

A Second Life is the work of an artist brimming with spirit, the will to live and keep creating. “After I gathered up the courage to come out to my fellow musicians,” Kohlhase writes, “my jazz community has been very open and accepting to me. Aside from a small circle of friends, I have not been that active a member of my gay community. … However, after revealing my status to a young, queer jazz musician he said, ‘I need to talk to you, because so many of your generation died.’ I realized that younger queer folk might need to hear my story, and I’ve made it my business of late to be more available to that community. Maybe I can bring more of my community to jazz music, which I feel, in many ways, saved my life.”

“Much love and many thanks to my fellow Explorers,” writes Kohlhase in his notes. “I’ve been playing music with Curt for more than 30 years and with Dan and Eric for more than 20. I’ve long felt that I could play on the oddest part of the beat or make any kind of sound without fazing them in the slightest. Jeb, Josiah, Seth and Tony are more recent additions but there’s a similar feeling that I can take it as far ‘in’ or ‘out’ as I wish and they’ll be there with me.”

ABOUT CHARLIE KOHLHASE:

Charlie Kohlhase moved to Boston from his native New Hampshire in 1980, following private studies with Stan Strickland and Roswell Rudd. In 1989 he formed the Charlie Kohlhase Quintet, which worked around Boston and toured nationally for a dozen years. He currently leads The Explorers Club as well as the Saxophone Support Group, a woodwind octet that plays saxophone-oriented compositions by Kohlhase, Julius Hemphill, Steve Lacy and John Tchicai. Kohlhase co-led groups with Tchicai for New England tours in 1993, 1997, 1998, 2003 and 2006; additional performance and recording credits include Leroy Jenkins and Anthony Braxton’s Genome Project.

Kohlhase was a member of Boston’s Either/ Orchestra from 1987 to 2001, playing throughout North America, Europe and Russia. He rejoined the group in 2008, collaborating witih Ethiopian jazz greats Mahmoud Ahmed, Mulatu Astatke, Alemayhu Eschete and Teshome Mitiku in venues ranging from Chicago to London, Toronto to Germany and Holland to Ethiopia. He currently directs the No Boundaries Big Band and the JCM Art Ensemble at the Longy School of Music of Bard College in Cambridge, and has long been active in jazz radio, most recently hosting “Research & Development” Monday afternoons on WMBR-FM in Cambridge.

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