On a recent Friday evening, a hooded figure in dark sunglasses climbed the pulpit at the First Congregational Church of Los Angeles. Just below, a few dozen singers gathered at the front of the packed sanctuary, conducted by a woman on stilts — elevated to see the choir in full. This was a first for Louis Cole, the man in the pulpit.
Cole is known primarily as a drummer, and his music over the past decade has fallen in the nexus of jazz, funk and rock, albeit with a flair that’s hard to categorize. But now Cole had given himself a new musical challenge, which might be best described by the tagline he included on the poster for this concert: “Louis Cole attempts to write new music for a choir.” “It is a new thing for me,” said Cole in an interview with All Things Considered host Ailsa Chang.
“I’ve always stacked my voice for my own harmonies, for my own music. But that’s just me by myself. It’s so different having a group of people, tuning with each other, singing with each other in the same space.
” The night of choral music wasn’t the only new musical territory Cole had been testing out recently. He also just released a new album of orchestral music, called nothing , which was recorded with the conductor Jules Buckley and the Dutch orchestra Metropole Orkest. All Things Considered caught up with Cole in the sanctuary of the First Congregational Church of Los Angeles as he was prepping for his show of choral music, and probed the musician about his crea.