Musician reflects on his journey with HIV
New England multireedist and composer Charlie Kohlhase and his Explorers Club will release a new album, “A Second Life,” in early June via Mandorla Music.
In this new work, Kohlhase dedicates a wideranging set to victims of the AIDS epidemic, and reflects on his own journey living with HIV.
Kohlhase says that he became infected with HIV in 2015.
“I feel like I am living a `second life' now,” he writes in the liner notes of the new album, “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).
“A Second Life” is the work of an artist brimming with spirit and 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.”
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 with 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.