During my sophomore year of college I saw Glenn Kotche perform a solo show at the Englert Theater in Iowa City. Midway through the performance he called for volunteers from the audience to come up on stage. I raised my hand and was picked out by a stage attendant. As we select few made our way up to the stage, Kotche stepped out from behind the drum set and kneeled in front of us; and we, who were kneeling in front of his kit, faced Kotche. The room was silent and there was an air of ancient ceremony in the space. To each of us he handed the head of a drum, each one turned upside down and in ascending size from left to right. On them he laid a single Hexbug, a small electric toy that vibrates and bounces, creating a different tone on each of the drum heads. As he moved the bugs between our drum heads, held out in front of us like dinner plates, Kotche was whipping an orchestral bow through the air with a focused intensity. All the sounds were slight, barely audible to even the volunteers. After a few minutes Kotche stopped, smiled warmly, thanked us all, and stood up.
Four years on and Kotche’s output has not slowed down—if anything, it seems as though it sped up. Putting out new records with Wilco, touring, a new album of compositions performed and recorded by the NYU Percussion Ensemble, and more, he has been keeping busy. I was lucky enough to get to speak with him about his upcoming performance with Danielle Agami’s dance company Ate9. The performance, aptly named calling glenn, will take place at Northrop on the University of Minnesota campus. (It may come as a surprise, however, that the piece isn’t actually named after Glenn Kotche.)
Kotche is a known collaborator, not uncommon for a member of Wilco. For a while now, he’s wanted to work with dancers in the capacity he is with Ate9: composing the score as well as performing it. Through a few degrees of separation in the musical web of Los Angeles, Kotche was connected with Catharine Soros, Ate9 board member and Center Dance Arts president. According to him, Soros, through all of her projects, is trying to shine more light on the LA dance community. Soros also knows Jeff Tweedy (small world, huh?).
After seeing Kotche perform, Soros spent some time digging into his discography and compositional works. “She asked if I would ever be interested in writing for dance,” said Kotche, “and I said of course I wanted to, I just haven’t pursued it or the opportunities haven’t arisen yet.”
“When the collaboration started, I made three big playlists of everything I’ve done, from the most mainstream to the most left-field experimental,” said Kotche, “Danielle went through and picked pieces she thought would work pretty well.” Besides the pieces Kotche already had written, there are also some brand new works that were written specifically for calling glenn.
Old works, new works, existing works with alterations—all of this made for a variety of sounds that needed to be performed on stage. “I’m playing a lot of drums, and on the drum set I have a lot of sound effects and noise makers. Anything from playing bits of plastic to shell chimes, bells, sound makers, and shakers, things like that. Anything from the smallest little hand percussion to electronic percussion and then the drum set in between,” said Kotche on his setup for calling glenn. It’s evident from the photos of the performance that he will have his hands full, as usual.
With so many tools readily available to an innovative performer like Kotche, there’s bound to be a certain level of mutability to the score. So far, he says, no two performances have been the same, and the piece continues to evolve over time. Despite that element of change, there are more moments of responsibility for Kotche, when he has to be able to come back from a structured improvisation and reconnect with the dancers. “There are times when I have to play something exactly the same way every time otherwise they’re going to miss their cues. I don’t want anyone to get injured.”
The score for calling glenn mixes strictly arranged music with intuition, as Kotche points out that there are a few sections in the show where he is the only person on stage. “There’s going to be two moments like that in Minneapolis where I can take it out as much as I want to, because it doesn’t affect anyone else. So I’ll have that full spectrum again,” he said.
One of the things that makes Kotche such an enigmatic figure is his extreme versatility. To someone on the outside, playing in a rock band seems like an entirely different world than being a composer for percussionists and string sections or performing concertos with full orchestras. He can play on his own just as masterfully as he can play to the movements of a conductor. The worlds of performer and composer—the collaborative and the solitary—have become intertwined.
calling glenn is not the only piece Kotche is working on with Agami and Ate9. Fishing, a multidisciplinary performance starring actor Jon Hamm, is currently in the works. Both Agami and Kotche knew Hamm separately, so adding Kotche’s music into the mix makes a lot of sense. “It’s basically a piece with a dance, an actor, and a drummer. I’m doing music live on stage, Jon is doing a monologue, and Danielle is dancing,” said Kotche, “so we’re all independent and yet dependent on each other.” The relationship between those three artists, to me, is analogous to Wilco, wherein each member is their own piece of a puzzle whose picture is only clear when all available powers are combined, yet each piece is a well of artistic power on its own.
In Fishing, Kotche will be using some software that he referred to as “sensory percussion.” Like a drum pad, this software will allow Kotche to summon almost any sound he chooses from his drum set. “You might be hearing electronic sounds, you might be hearing synthesizer sounds—you might even be hearing some speaking,” said Kotche. “I think the stories Jon is reciting are really, really cool and interesting. Danielle found a writer she’s worked with in the past, and the set is going to be pretty elaborate.” There are still some things to be finished within the piece, and the group will be at MASS MoCA in April to workshop the current material.
These performances are not the first time Kotche will be using strange technologies and odd items as percussion instruments. Notably, he worked with the Notre Dame engineering department to work out new technologies for percussionists. “[John] Cage, of course, has always been a big influence, and I think for any studied percussionist he is a big influence in the liberating world of sounds,” said Kotche, when talking about using new or non-musical objects like the aforementioned Hexbugs. Among his tool belt are massagers, electric toothbrushes, homemade mallets, and pieces of hardware. “With percussion, anything goes, and it’s always been that way.”
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