A New Sonic Adventure from Percussionist Mike Kuhl
[Photo credit: Efrain Ribeiro]
Baltimore percussionist Mike Kuhl has a new release entitled Diverging Passages. Kuhl has been a fixture in the Baltimore jazz scene for decades in many different bands, and many different styles. From straight-ahead, to free jazz, to the avant-garde to Venezuelan jazz, and many more, Kuhl has held down the rhythm section. He is a current faculty member and an alum of Towson University.
In this release we hear Kuhl as a solo artist, using an impressive variety of percussion instruments, or objects he has requisitioned to be percussion instruments, as well as electronics that process the percussion sounds. Each track was fully improvised, recorded live on a single track, with no overdubbing. An impressive feat, considering that the recordings often sound like a crowd of percussionists are playing!
The recordings show the impressive depth and breadth of Kuhl’s musical visions. While some tracks like “Klang” have the kind of percussive quality one would expect from a solo percussionist, other tracks like “1:08 AM” and the “Interlude” that follows it have a floating, ethereal quality that is primarily melodic, and shows influences of the 20th century avant-garde composers like John Cage and Alvin Curran.
I had the opportunity to sit down with the composer and performer of these interesting works, and hear first-hand about his vision and the process through which these recordings took shape.
BJA – What inspired you to do a solo album?
Mike – There’s a lot of great drum solo records out there already. Milford Graves has a couple that are super inspirational to me. Gerald Cleaver has released some amazing solo drum records as well. I took a lot from my influences of jazz drummers that did solo records, as well as classical and experimental musicians. I was a freshman at Towson University, and we were playing this John Cage piece called “Third Construction.” The instrumentation was wild. I’ve never experienced anything like that. My instrumentation was five coffee cans, an instrument called a lion’s roar, a conch shell, some Different size caxixi’s. It was so cool. And we’re making the most melodic music, but not using traditionally melodic instruments. So very early on, that just stuck with me. I love combinations of sounds. So forever, I’ve just been collecting sounds either from just found in antique stores, unique sounds or actual instruments. I just kind of cobble them all together and try to make it as musical and melodic as possible.
BJA – For this recording there are a lot of non-traditional instruments,
Mike – There’s really nothing traditional, like a traditional drum set. I had a lot of metal percussion instruments, like cowbells and bells. There are some great instrument makers out there. Peter Englehart has been making metal percussion instruments for a long time. Adam Morford runs a company called Morph Beats. He’s a welder and he makes all these wild metallic sounds, so I had a lot of their sounds in there.
There’s really cool things that I’ve gotten along the way. There’s this great machine called a Kaleidoloop made by Critter and Guitari. It has a microphone that records the whole room, then it plays back in this real grainy sound. It’s almost like having a second musician in the group. Then I run it through various guitar pedals and finally through a modular synthesizer called a cocoquantas. This machine has a mind of it’s own so it works well with the spontaneous nature of my music. It’s made by Peter Blasser, a great synth maker who lived in Baltimore for short while.
The record’s fully improvised, too, there’s no overdubs, I just kind of rolled through them all the way. I like flying like that!
BJA – I know you as a jazz drummer primarily, but on tracks like “1:08 AM,” it didn’t have a percussive or rhythmic quality. It was very melodic. I thought that was interesting.
Mike – For a lot of these, there are little weird sketches going on in my head before I approach a piece. There is some sort of method to the madness. And that one in general, I wanted to start with the gong, just creating a huge sound. So it was like a Gustav Mahler introduction, to one of his symphonies, I remember these incredible entrances, and I just thought, I’ll start with the gong and then see where it goes after that. I was happy when that came out. That’s when my daughter was born, too. 1:08 AM. And it has that feeling of coming into this life.
BJA – Have you found that Baltimore is a fertile area for experimental music?
Mike – For sure, yeah! There’s so many great open-minded people here.
You know, John Dierker, Marc Miller, Dave Ballou, all these guys are just fun to play with, because their minds are so open. That’s a very unique Baltimore thing. I go to other cities all the time and everybody talks about the vibrant improv scene we have here
We’ll see what happens with this project, but I’m super into it. Shiny Boy Press, the label that put it out, Walsh and Connor, are running this great label in Baltimore, and they are putting out some great stuff. They approached me about doing a record. So thankful for those guys. That’s kind of like a Baltimore thing. To have that intimate group of people that really cares about whats going on here, so it’s easier sometimes to reach out and put things together. And that’s what those guys are doing. Love it.
Baltimore is a city that will give your music a chance, when you do it convincingly, and you do it well. So yeah, I’m happy with it. I’m looking forward to doing the next one.
–By David McGarvey
David McGarvey is a jazz pianist and bandleader for The David McGarvey Trio. This is his debut article for the Baltimore Jazz Alliance.