News - Ken LaRoche

This week I was very saddened to find out that my dear friend, flutist, multi-instrumentalist and musical mentor Ken LaRoche had passed away after complications following surgery to remove a benign tumor in his brain. Ken was the co-founder of the ground breaking world music group Do'a;a that I joined in 1986. Below find his obituary and an interview with him from 2001. Further information about Ken and World Music Ensemble can be found at www.randyarmstrong.com

Obituary Notice: Kenneth Norman LaRoche, 53, of Hadley, MA, died peacefully surrounded by family at Tufts-New England Medical Center, Boston, MA, on January 9, 2006 from complications following surgery. Born in Peterborough, NH, June 14, 1952, a graduate of Peterborough High School, 1970, Ken attended the Longy School of Music in Cambridge, MA. Survivors include parents Roland and Barbara LaRoche of New London, NH; his sister Cathy LaRoche and her husband Michael Wakefield of Peterborough, NH; daughter Adora LaRoche, 26, Northampton, MA, and son Tobey LaRoche, 18, Peterborough, NH; Wendy LaRoche of Peterborough, NH; and his sister-in-law MJ LaRoche and niece Shannah of Walnut Creek, CA; and many uncles, aunts and cousins. His brother John LaRoche died in 1999.

One of the originators of what has become known as "world music," Ken was a skilled composer and improviser, with the intuitive ability to weave together the sounds of many cultures into new musical forms. For over 30 years, Ken delighted audiences worldwide as an accomplished professional musician performing on flute, piano, saxophone and a vast collection of world instruments. He was a co-founding member of the music group DOAH World Music Ensemble. Dizzy Gillespie hailed his music as "One of the important contributions to the future of our music"

Ken was a devoted member of the Baha'i Faith, a world-embracing religion founded on the principles of the oneness of humankind and world peace. He filled the world with his love and light, leading the way to help unite the world through music.

A beloved father, Ken lived his true life's purpose dedicated to spirit. His final days with his family and friends were beautiful and peaceful, full of prayer, meditation, music, and love, leaving us all with an unbreakable connection that continues to reverberate through the hundreds of hearts that cherished him all over the world. He will be deeply missed by his family, countless friends, and fellow musicians. In lieu of flowers, a special educational fund has been established for Tobey and Adora. Checks can simply be made out to Ken LaRoche's Children's Educational Fund (no deposit # is needed) and mailed to T.D. Banknorth of NH, 120 Grove Street, Peterborough, NH 03458. All friends and family are invited to the burial service that will be held on Friday, January 13 at 1 pm at the Harmony Grove Cemetery in Portsmouth, NH. Arrangements are under the direction of J. Verne Wood Funeral Home, Portsmouth, NH (603) 436-1702. A reception will follow at Fellowship Hall, Green Acre Baha'i School, 219 Main St. Elliot, ME. A Peterborough celebration of Ken's life and music will be held later this month T.B.A.

Ken LaRoche: A Musician’s Spiritual Vision By Charles E. Hertan
Note: This interview was conducted on 9/14/01, at Ken’s home in Hadley, MA. Ken LaRoche is a musician’s musician whose fluid, soulful style has won widespread praise and admiration among his colleagues and loyal fans. In 1974 he co-founded the group Do’a, one of the earliest and most influential bands of the New Age/ World Music genre. Ken made his name as improvisational flute player, but great chops and dedication have enabled him to master saxophone and keyboards as well. Originally from Peterborough, NH, Ken moved to the Pioneer Valley of Western Massachusetts in 1998, continuing his quest to create what he calls “spiritual jazz”. On a given night, you may encounter his expansive, quietly joyful presence performing with a wide assortment of area musicians, playing a variety of instruments with sweetness and flair, or just hanging out among the crowd, having a few laughs. How many different projects are you involved in now? Not as many as I want! I’m playing with Jazzotree; the Pangaeans, which is a big world music dance band; Transglobal, a group that I co-founded with Michael DiMartino, and occasionally I sit in with his other band, World Beat. I’ve also been producing a recording for singer/songwriter Jonathon Clay. You’ve sat in for all kinds of different local musicians, right? Probably at least a couple dozen. How hard is that, being called in to do a gig with someone you don’t know? Well, it depends on where they’re coming from. I’ve got an incredible ear, and the stuff most people are doing isn’t too complicated. If it isn’t something with a lot of weird, off-the-wall changes, I’m right there. I’ll play it in my own way, which may not be the way they’re hearing it; but I’ll be able to add something that’s sweet, so generally, it’s easy for me. How many different instruments do you play? I have a collection of over 200 instruments, well over 100 flute-related instruments alone. I play flute and whistle instruments from all over the world, as well as regular concert flute. Recently I’ve done a lot of work on my sax playing. I do most of my composing on keyboards, and I also play hand percussion. What’s your practice routine like? I don’t have a routine, I hope to start one soon! I actually just got a place that will be more comfortable to set up my recording equipment and play in. What I tend to do, more than practice, is compose a lot on the keyboard. How long have you been producing? For years, actually. About 15 years ago, a friend asked me “could you come and help me put this piece together?” Believe it or not, I produced a country single for this guy. I don’t know why he asked me, but I’m glad, because I brought it into the studio, found some good musicians to play, and when I left the engineer said “You know, you really ought to get into producing, you’ve got a good talent.” That made a difference; I said, “OK, I’m a producer now.” What were your early musical influences and experiences? I was brought up in a household where there was lots of classical music, Bach, Beethoven. I’m certainly very much a Romantic, both in terms of personality and taste, so there’s a lot of classical stuff that I like. I started playing flute at age 10, and I played in the New Hampshire Philharmonic Orchestra 3 years in High School, so I had a lot of experiences playing with adults. Were you the youngest player in the orchestra? One of the youngest. My flute teacher was 1st chair flute player, so she thought…well, I don’t know what she thought. We were practicing “The Pines of Rome”, which is all 32nd notes or something, just black and all these notes strung on the page, and I was like, “Do you play all these notes? How do you do this? And she said, “Oh, you just kind of go up and down as fast as you can, you know, make it sound like wind…” The next early influence was The Beatles, quite honestly; when they came out it just blew my mind. I remember having to go to bed earlier than my brother. He’d be up doing his homework and he had his little radio in there, and every time The Beatles came on I’d sneak out in the hallway and stick my ear up to his door, and wait ‘til it was over and crawl back into my room… In my late teens, I listened to a lot of jazz; Miles Davis, Paul Winter, Oregon; then I got into world music. What was the first band you were involved in? We put together a little jazz dance band thing in high school. It must’ve been one of the few dance bands with flute! Exactly! That’s always been a problem! I had to make up things, because there was no place for a flute player to be. So how did you make the transition from playing in the orchestra, to world music and forming the band Do’a?. Well, actually there’s a major piece I left out. While I was being encouraged toward this classical career with the symphony, I met Frank Noble, an avant-garde jazz drummer who moved here from the west coast. He was looking for people to jam with, and I got invited and went to his little place by the lake. We’d say something like, “OK, let’s play the mist on the lake”, and we’d just do this “out” stuff. During one of those early sessions, I was playing, and all of the sudden I was outside of myself watching it, and realizing that I was playing stuff that I couldn’t conceive of playing! That sounds really exciting! I really felt that I was channeling something and at that same moment, I had a waking vision. Of all humanity, the whole world, marching together in a big crowd, arm in arm, very joyous and celebratory. At the heart of this whole movement of people were musicians, artists and poets, all the creative people of the world. It’s a little scary to talk about, because some people may find this stuff strange; but to me, it’s what it’s all about. I never wanted to become rich and famous, or aspire to the rock star thing; and a little more pragmatically, I knew it was going to be a very difficult row to hoe. But this vision, and my feeling that the arts have always been at the forefront of any great renaissance, is what inspires me to keep making music. I think we’re ushering in a time where the greatest renaissance in history needs to play out. So I keep trying to do my thing, and saying, “Where’s the crowd? I’m 47 years old ” Anyway, around this time, I was ready to leave New England, go somewhere and find a creative art scene… Hit the big city? Yeah, probably, but I didn’t really want to, being a country boy at heart. But then I met Randy Armstrong, who became my musical partner for 17 years. He had just moved here from Ohio, and we were trying to put together a new project, move away from rock & roll roots and do something more acoustic and world music oriented. I remember Do’a as one of the biggest “New Age” bands playing Boston in the 1970’s; did you categorize the music that way? Well, we were certainly put in the New Age Musical category as it started to develop, and our record company actively pursued that label as at least a term to call it, some way to market it. But fairly quickly it had such mixed connotations, especially on the west coast, where there were a lot of just really bad basement tapes, flaky musicians strumming on one chord forever and yodeling over it, or something. So we tried to move away from that genre and call it new jazz or world music. When did you start getting some recognition? We signed a record deal with Philo Records about 3 years into it. We released two albums as a duo. Then for our third album we decided to expand the sound, and added bass, percussion and sax players. We liked the sound, so when that album came out, we decided to tour with the quintet, to see if we could actually book that many people. We had a great response, so from then on we were a quintet. How did you come up with the name Do’a? When Randy and I first got together, one of the first things we did was travel out to St. Louis for a big Baha’i conference. The Baha’i faith is based on trying to show the unity of all people and religions, how they all come from one source and just tap into different chapters of the same book. We’re at a time historically where we need to come together globally and find our unity; that’s the basis of Baha’i teachings. So there were 10,000 people gathered from all over the world, gathered to talk about peace issues. To open the conference, a man got up and chanted a prayer. When it was over, silence came over the theatre and chills ran up my spine. I turned to Randy, and he looked at me and we nodded, and afterward we talked about how we wanted that depth of uplift and connectedness in our music. Later, we went up and asked him what that chant was about. He told us that it was a call to a state of meditation and worship, and it was called Do’a. Can you single out one part of your career as the most exciting time so far? When we were touring with the quintet, there was a period of about 2.5 years where we’d been playing together enough that we were in each other’s heads; we had the show down. Although in some ways it started getting stale, we knew it so well, it was a really powerful show, and every place we played for over 2 years, we got standing ovations. Toward the end of that period, in the early 80’s, we did a tour for the UN sponsored International Year of Peace. That was really exciting, because it was making a statement about what the music was really about: we’re promoting peace. It also reconnected me with people of my generation in a different way. A lot of those people had gone into mainstream jobs, but you’d mention “we’re doing this music dedicated to peace”, and you’d see this light sort of go off in their eyes, this rekindling, like “yeah, man, that’s really great!” That trip culminated in traveling to India in December; we played for dedication ceremonies for a beautiful new Baha’i temple out there, shaped like a lotus flower. It was amazing, and we played in the Indira Gandhi Stadium for about 15,000 people, an international concert. What was the response like? It was completely different than any audience we’d played for. Obviously, partially because it was percentage-wise more stacked with people from the eastern part of the world; from Malaysia, Japan…and the westerners were mostly Europeans. So I remember that we had an incredible response, but it was funny that all of a sudden when our drummer played tablas, we heard this “oooooo” from the audience, like, “wow, he’s playing our instrument.” Was this part of a world tour? No; we were just invited to be a part of that occasion. We scraped and raised the funds, and while we were there we did a few small side concerts in India, and came back after two weeks to play a New Year’s Eve gig in Concord, NH to pay our January bills! What’s Randy doing these days? He’s doing a variety of things—a lot of teaching, working with a variety of groups, doing some solo stuff, he works with a storyteller and did the score for a major PBS documentary. Where do you think your heart is right now in terms of what direction you’re moving with your music? That’s interesting, because I’m in a place where I have to take a new look at everything in my life, including the music; I’m at an age where I can’t get myself juiced up by the same old tricks. I’m realizing that I want to play with other people who are as deeply committed; hopefully equally talented if not more. I’d really like to play in a group where I felt like I was the worst musician. But the bottom line is really coming back to the core, which has always been to dedicate the music to spirit. Any advice for young musicians starting out? Don’t (both laugh). Are you serious? Well, partially. In my old days, when I was less diplomatic, if someone came to me and said “I want to be a musician”, I’d look ‘em in the eye and say “you’re crazy”, quite honestly, and then I’d watch for the response. Because if it’s THE THING you need to do, to make yourself happy, then you absolutely should do it. I believe that people should follow their gift and their bliss. But just be very aware that first, you have to be the cream that rises to the top. The way you do that is by working hard, and persevering long enough to move ahead, and not expecting a lot more, just that the music will be there for you. Second, make sure that your girlfriends or prospective fiancées know about that right up front, otherwise you won’t last (laughs). How do you deal with the stresses of being a musician? Well, different people have different ways they deal with that. For myself, the way I’ve been able to be a full-time musician, and last almost 30, 35 years, is by learning how to live very frugally. Here’s what makes it harder these days: you used to be able to chase cheap rents, find a place for $150 a month, and now the cost of basic essentials like food, clothing, transportation, is just way, way more expensive than it was. But that’s the deal; buying cheap junker cars and hoping they last, or 2 cheap junker cars, hoping one will run, and that’s a price to me that’s totally worth paying; but it’s very stressful and it takes a toll on my life and those around me… What do you think about the pros and cons of having a day job? Personally, I can’t do that, because a lot of the music happens for me when there’s nothing musical going on. It’s about the muse, and my music is about the preparedness of my being and my soul, and that’s the kind of commitment I bring to performance. I have to prepare my psyche, my heart and soul, so that when I perform, I can just put out 150%. To me, it’s really a sacred act. I don’t just come in and say, “Oh this is a fun thing to do”, to just come from work and get up and perform. I’ve never been able to shift gears like that. Some people can do it; but for the most part, I don’t think so. Maybe since I’m willing to pay my dues in terms of that stress we were just talking about, I’m all the more passionate about it. Whereas if you know you have to have a second income like teaching, it’s tough to match that level of commitment and passion. What kind of music are you listening to these days? I don’t listen to music, for the most part. Throughout my career I’ve gone through periods when I’ll be absorbing new influences, mostly improvisational music or world, ethnic, or “crossover” music. Then I go through periods when I just don’t want to hear other things because it prevents me from getting tuned into what my music is, or what music wants to come through me, so I’ll go two or three years without listening to much. How would you evaluate the musical scene here? When I first came here I put myself out as a player available for hire. I hadn’t freelanced since 1970, so I was shocked to find out that the pay scale was the same to half the amount that it was back then! Is that endemic to this area? It’s a problem in a lot of places. I think it’s a little bit worse in this area, because there are a lot of creative people here, there’s too many people ready to play for next to nothing. I try to convince people that they have to just stop playing for less. It’s never going to change as long as people are willing to come in and take the gig for nothing. So I really think musicians need to come to a place where they value what they do more, find ways to be honored by getting paid a reasonable amount. What’s your favorite local venue to play in or see concerts at? I think my favorite is the Fine Arts Center at UMass. I like real fine-sounding concert halls. I saw Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan there; it was one of my favorite concerts ever. The atmosphere of the place was just transformed into spirit and love, and to me that was the ultimate. What did he play? Hindu Pakistani vocal music. Basically, it’s songs to the beloved. The style is really weird and intense. So at first, if you heard it in the background playing on someone’s stereo you’d think, “eew”, but it’s very, very powerful.