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11/06 Friday
7:30 PM CHARLIE KOHLHASE’S EXPLORER’S CLUB
Join Charlie Kohlhase and his Explorer’s Club band as they continue the celebration of the release of their debut CD “Adventures” (Boxholder Records) in concert at The Lily Pad, 1353 Cambridge Street, Inman Square, Cambridge, MA on Friday, November 6. Music starts at 7:15 PM. Suggested donation is $10. Log on to HYPERLINK "http://www.lily-pad.net" www.lily-pad.net. While Explorers guitarist Eric Hofbauer is touring Europe with a theatrical production and a couple favored drummers are unavailable there will be some guest artists in the lineup— trumpet virtuoso Jerry Sabatini (Sonic Explorers, Kakalla) will augment the front line of Charlie Kohlhase on alto, tenor & baritone saxophones; Matt Langley on tenor & soprano saxophones and Jeff Galindo on trombone. The phenomenal young bassist Sean Farias will join Jef Charland in the bass section and Miki Matsuki will capably handle the percussion chores herself. The opening set will feature the solo tenor saxophone of Collin Johnson (a former Kohlhase student) performing original compositions, including the premiere of “Suite Desert,” a 3-part cycle inspired by the Red Rock Desert of Johnson’s native Utah.
“Over the decades Charlie Kohlhase has led many bands, and justifiably they have been lauded by the critics,” writes Stu Vandermark in Cadence. “Therefore it is of some significance that Kohlhase’s Explorer’s Club is the best band he’s ever had and he’s writing his all-time best charts for this outfit.” Starting out as a quintet in early 2005 -- in effect as a variation on the relatively short-lived group, CK5 -- it promptly expanded to a septet with the addition of a trombone and second drummer.
As Nate Dorward writes in the liner notes, the music is “…good-humoredly averse to the predictable, both composerly and collectivist, a set of ten explorations into the musical hinterlands that return to home base logically but by the least obvious of routes.” In short, all new musical discoveries culminating in a hell of a good time.
The CD has earned wide critical acclaim. As Michael Rosenstein writes in Signal To Noise: “Boston-based reed player Charlie Kohlhase is an inveterate jazz explorer. Over the course of the last couple of decades, he’s honed a sensibility that combines an encyclopedic take on the tradition, a personal approach to the intersection of post-bop structuralism and boisterous freedom, and a wicked sense of humor… It’s been a while since Kohlhase has released a recording, but this one shows he’s still hard at work charting new courses into the musical unknown.”
Charlie Kohlhase’s most recent CDs on Boxholder were Play Free or Die, with the Charlie Kohlhase Quintet, and Good Night Songs, with John Tchicai and Garrison Fewell. The John Tchicai trio’s new release recorded live at Birdland, Tribal Ghost, will be released soon. He lives in Chelsea, MA, hosts Boston’s radio program “Research & Development,” and teaches at the Longy School of Music in Cambridge.
http://www.charliekohlhase.com/
Sound Clips: http://www.myspace.com/charliekohlhasesexplorersclub
“You’d think that, with all the uninspired stuff that’s being promoted in today’s jazz world, genuinely creative artists like Kohlhase and his cohorts would be the talk of every town.” — Duck Baker, CODA
“Pursuing a loose superhero theme wrapped in a string of absurdly punning song titles, Adventures introduces veteran adventurer Charlie Kohlhase’s highly resourceful septet. Powered by two drummers and featuring a blustery front line of two reeds, The Explorers club is a band that can sound like a much larger unit but also shift into raw-boned blowing reminiscent of New York’s loft era.” — James Hale, DownBeat