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The Charlie Kohlhase Great (North East) Jazz Reunion

$20 Cover @ the Door ($15 Students/Seniors) / Start 8pm / Doors 7:30pm

The Charlie Kohlhase Great (North East) Jazz Reunion:

Boston, Conn. and New York legacies in the spotlight:

You’ve heard them all in different National and Boston bands, often with one another over 10’s of years. Now for the first time all together on the same stage for a memorable, fun and creative re-union!

Iconic Multi-Saxophonist, composer - Charlie Kohlhase (Boston, Makanda Project)

-Bassist, Joe Fonda (New York, Conn.)

-Drummer, Warren Smith (New York, MakandaProject)

-Bass Trombonist and Tuba, Bill Lowe (Dorchester, Makanda Project)

-Multi-Saxophonist Seth Meicht (Boston)

Five Master Jazz Musicians engaged in composed & improvised Jazz creativity

Charlie Kohlhase

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“As a mainstay in Boston’s jazz scene, saxophonist Charlie Kohlhase has helped cultivate the city as one of America’s most fertile hotbeds for creative music.” (John Murph, Jazz Times Magazine)

“Kohlhase’s own themes are as action-packed as a comic book and as spontaneous in feel as graffiti.” (Nate Dorward, Squid’s Ear)    

"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.

Joe Fonda

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"There is more to creative mastership than the surface of satisfaction and political certainty. The music of Joe Fonda is part of a living tradition of belief and dedication. Future historians will be surprised at the breadth of Mr. Fonda’s offerings. This is a real virtuoso and composer of the highest order."  Anthony Braxton, 1996.


“Bassist Joe Fonda has nourished so many groups and projects with his unerring time, deep and constant imagination and rich tone that one struggles to imagine a New York jazz scene that doesn’t include him. He’s played as a sideman with dozens of great, prominent players (including Anthony Braxton, with whom he played in various musical combinations for 15 years) and has led, and still leads, a number of his own groups”.  All about Jazz. 

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Warren Smith

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“Drummer, percussionist and composer Warren Smith has arguably had one of the most varied careers of any improvising drummer, working with artists as diverse as Sam Rivers, Aretha Franklin, Van Morrison, Bill Cole and Harry Partch. Though originally trained in modern classical percussion, jazz and improvised music became paramount after moving to New York in the late '50s. With Max Roach, he started the important percussion ensemble M'Boom Re: Percussion and Smith also opened one of the first and longest-running performance lofts, Studio WIS, in 1967”.

“Having played the entire gamut of percussion instruments, including the trap set, Smith can say: ‘I have a wider palette. I think like a painter. I am trying to make you see what I am playing. I have tried to enlarge the scope of the drum set so that it is more like a full percussion instrument…’  Jazz Times.

Bill Lowe

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Bass trombonist and tubaist Bill Lowe has been a major force in the music world for over thirty years as a performer, composer, producer, an educator. He has co-led the Boston Jazz Repertory Orchestra and co-produced Boston’s annual John Coltrane Memorial Concert.  He has worked with most of the masters of African-American creative music, across all genres and musical cliques, from musical legends like Dizzy GillespieEartha Kitt, and Clark Terry, to the leaders of the avant-garde like Muhal Richard AbramsHenry Threadgill, and Cecil Taylor, to under-heralded greats like George RussellJames Jabbo Ware and Bill Barron., the Bill Lowe/Phillipe Cretian Quintet, and JUBA, co-, and composed several major works, including his opera, Reb’s Last Funeral, his ongoing interdisciplinary project Signifyin’ Natives, and the music/theater piece Crossing John at the Crossroads. As an educator, Lowe has taught at several major universities, lectured throughout the world from Cuba to Paris, and mentor.

Seth Meicht

“Meicht is a tenor saxophonist with a robust tone and a venturesome streak, though he isn't averse to swinging”. Nate Chinen New York Times (July 23, 2009)


“[Listen to the] controlled chaos of The Meicht Group's third release, an out-there conflagration of improvised cacophony and premeditated orneriness. [They are a] wonderfully inventive jazz/experimental trio”. Brian Howard Philadelphia City Paper (11-18 October 2001)

Member of the renowned Odean Pope’s Saxophone Choir

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The Creative Music Series (CMS) was established in January, 2015, to showcase the work of adventurous jazz musicians from out-of-state, presenting them in intimate venues in the Cambridge/Somerville area.My endeavor was a reaction to the apparent lack of invitations being extended to accomplished, new talent and even unknown musicians to the Boston area.CMS has now begun to zero in on Boston based musicians who are creating their own projects with these out-of-town guests, and taking these musical risks to find an expression and gain a wider appreciation.