Charlie Kohlhase and His Explorers Club Celebrate 'A SECOND LIFE'

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.”

Kohlhase's Explorers Club has appeared in a number of configurations over the years, on releases for Creative Nation (Impermanence) and Boxholder (Adventures), as well as a bimonthly live series at the Lilypad in Cambridge. On A Second Life the lineup expands to an octet, with an arresting instrumentation of reeds (Kohlhase, tenorist Seth Meicht), brass (trombonist Jeb Bishop, trumpeter Dan Rosenthal, tubist Josiah Reibstein), guitar (Eric Hofbauer), bass (Tony Leva) and drums (Curt Newton). In light of Bishop's decision to return to Chicago after years spent on the East Coast, Kohlhase knew it was time to document what became a cherished edition of the group.

“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.”

Leva and Newton, in addition, are mainstays of Hofbauer's recent projects; Meicht and Bishop were together in the frontline of the guitarist's Book of Water sextet from 2019. Kohlhase and Hofbauer initially worked up “Character-Building Blues” as a duo piece. It's a bari sax feature, but in the guitar-friendly key of A, slow in tempo, with a bit of gutbucket swagger, establishing how the Explorers Club balances density and openness, harmony and texture. “No Such Explorer” has more of a dance beat, inspired by inganga music from Burundi, with Meicht and Kohlhase splitting tenor sax solos, bookending a virtuosic turn from Reibstein.

“Lennette” is a portmanteau of Ornette Coleman and Lennie Tristano, both heroes to Kohlhase, channeled in different ways in this free-leaning, swinging, atmospheric piece. Hofbauer's use of effects, here and elsewhere in the set, is uncannily organic in terms of tone quality—every timbral nuance in “Lennette” is clear as a bell in a riveting extended guitar/ trombone duo passage, followed by a trio break for Kohlhase on alto with trumpet and bass. The grooving, beautifully orchestrated “No Dog, No Bike” is inspired by Hermeto Pascoal, while the loping gait of “Airport Station” came about after hearing a bank of escalators, gears grinding in a kind of rhythmic symmetry. “Consolation Cake,” another Kohlhase original, is swinging, melodically leaping, with fuzztone guitar and tuba soloing together (one of many examples of collective improvisation in pairs, threes and other offshoots to surface on A Second Life).

The Explorers Club also 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.

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.”

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 performances and recording credits include Leroy Jenkins, Anthony Braxton's Sonic Genome Project, Cab Calloway, Oliver Lake, Craig Harris, Roswell Rudd and Charles Tolliver."

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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