Is there anything Charlie Kohlhase can't do? He plays "straight-ahead" jazz with more depth and fervor than many a young lion. He plays "outside" - often on those same "straight-ahead" pieces - with coherence, wit, and a firm sense of musical architecture. He composes imaginatively and prolifically. He leads a group of five enormously talented and capable musicians with his own combustible alto, baritone and tenor saxophone playing. All he lacks - so far - is recognition commensurate with his abilities.

Kohlhase hails from that hotbed of jazz, Portsmouth, New Hampshire. An early influence was Sun Ra; whose music he first heard as a teenage DJ at WUNH (University of New Hampshire radio). Ra, of course, spans the musical spectrum from the "inside" to the "outside," (as does Charlie K. himself), and this open-mindedness and versatility shows up in the Sun Ra records Kohlhase tabs as his favorites: they range from the gloriously chunky swing date Supersonic Jazz to the mid-Sixties freak-out The Magic City.

He also counts Thelonious Monk and Steve Lacy among the jazz greats he admires - and counts as inspirations for the humor that runs through his music: "I remember the first Thelonious Monk I ever bought had his trio version of 'Little Rootie Tootie.' That first chord - blump, blump, blump - was a huge dissonant chord and it cracked me up. I wasn't sure what it was, but there was something I liked about this guy." Likewise Lacy: "When I heard my first Steve Lacy record, there was a thing on it called 'Note,' which was basically the band improvising while Irene Aebi read a telegram that Steve Lacy received from somebody. The pun in there grabbed me in a big way. I latched onto [Monk and Lacy] right away." Other favorites include John Gilmore, Von Freeman, Elmo Hope (whose "One Second, Please" is given an enormous treatment by the Charlie Kohlhase Quintet), Henry Threadgill, and John Coltrane.

Mostly self-taught in saxophone and composition, Kohlhase started playing at age 18, inspired by the music of Eric Dolphy and Ornette Coleman. (He also numbers among his influences this characteristically eclectic cast of characters: Lee Konitz, Roscoe Mitchell, John Tchicai, Roswell Rudd, and Julius Hemphill.) He's studied privately with Tom Bergeron, Stan Strickland, Rudd, and Joe Allard. He moved to Boston in 1980 and has performed in a great variety of setting since then, often with fellow saxophonist Matt Langley, his longtime colleague in the Charlie Kohlhase Quintet.

He joined the celebrated and eclectic Either/Orchestra in 1987. His imagination and wit get their best chance to roam freely, however, in the music of the Quintet, which he formed in 1989 with Langley, Curtis Hasselbring (trombone), John Turner (bass) and Matt Wilson (drums). Probably because the music of the quintet captures the sheer joy of playing as do few other ensembles, the personnel has been very stable over the years; John Carlson (trumpet) replaced Hasselbring in 1992 and John McLellan replaced Wilson in 1998. The Quintet has toured the Midwest annually since 1994, but in an unusual lapse of taste and good judgment, Europe and New York have yet to catch on.

The Quintet's recordings include Research & Development (1990), Good Deeds (1992), Dart Night (1995) (all on Accurate) and Dancing On My Bedpost (1998) on CIMP. The Quintet also appears on the Sun Ra tribute Wavelength Infinity (Rastascan) and on Ken Scaphorst's Over the Rainbow (Accurate). Kohlhase also co-led a quintet with John Tchicai for two performanes in September 1997; he recorded with Tchicai in December 1998. Kohlhase has also played as sideman with the Mandala Octet (Accurate and Volition) and with guitarist Mitch Seidman (Brownstone).

Catch Charlie on the radio! He hosts "Research & Development" every Tuesday from 2-4 PM on WMBR-FM in Cambridge (MIT radio). Catch him on disc, or better yet, live. But don't for any reason fail to catch him!

"Charlie Kohlhase's music is post-modern, free yet not inchoate, merging the harmonic sophistication of bebop with more asymmetrical approaches to form." --Bob Blumenthal

Familiar with Charlie Kohlhase's work? We welcome your comments.