Photo by Nori Swennes 2021
SHORT BIO: AJ Kluth is an (ethno)musicologist researching issues of aesthetics, identity, and ethics in global popular and experimental musics. Recent projects include work related to jazz and gender, genre drift and identity, Afrofuturism and hip hop, and the aesthetic slippage between utopias and societies of control. He serves as musicology faculty at Case Western Reserve University where he teaches courses exploring global popular musics, experimentalisms, social justice, and aesthetics. In addition to his work as a researcher and teacher, Kluth is a collaborative improvising saxophonist and multi-instrumentalist invested in Black American Music and musical experimentalisms. He has worked extensively in Chicago, NYC, and Los Angeles scenes and is a top call reed player in Northeast Ohio.
LONG BIO: AJ Kluth is an (ethno)musicologist researching issues of aesthetics, identity, and ethics in popular and experimental musics. Recent projects include work related to jazz and gender, genre drift and identity, Afrofuturism and hip hop, and the aesthetic slippage between utopias and societies of control. As musicology faculty at Case Western Reserve University he leads lower- and upper-level courses exploring global popular musics, experimentalisms, social justice, and aesthetics.
Since arriving in Cleveland in 2019, Kluth has organized study groups related to music and decolonization and continues to facilitate public-facing discussions about music, class, and race. In 2023 he organized Toward a Different Kind of Horizon at the Cleveland Museum of Art that comprised several days of class visits, panel discussions, and a collaborative concert with Moor Mother, Lonnie Holley, Lee Bains, and Mourning [A] BLKstar. This event fostered interdepartmental collaboration (CWRU’s Department of Music, English, and African and African American Studies concentration) and fostered engagement with more than six hundred students and community members. In October of 2024 organized “Thinking Sound, Archives, and Identities: Close Listening,” a multi-day partnership with CWRU and the Cleveland Music of Art centering Nakagawa’s sound work, “Peace Resonance: Hiroshima/Wendover.” He is the faculty advisor for the CWRU student group Case Sound Society.
As a bandleader, session musician, and section player he has enjoyed a career working in Chicago, NYC, and Los Angeles markets before landing in Cleveland. He has become a top call saxophonist and woodwind doubler in Northeast Ohio where has worked with local and touring artists as well as Broadway national tours including The Tina Turner Musical, The Wiz, Company, Mrs. Doubtfire, Funny Girl, MJ: The Musical, and Some Like It Hot. Apart from his own releases on OA2 records, recent collaborations with Cleveland artists include In Search of Our Father’s Gardens (Astral Spirits), and Soothsayer (American Dreams).
Publications appear in the the Journal of the Society for American Music, Journal of Jazz Studies, The International Journal of New Media, Technology, and the Arts, the collected volume Sonic Identity at the Margins, and DownBeat Magazine. He has presented research at conferences throughout the United States, UK, and Europe.
Dr. Kluth holds a BA degree in Applied Music from UW Green Bay, a MM in Jazz Saxophone Performance from DePaul University, a MA in Humanities and Social Thought from NYU, and a PhD in Ethnomusicology (Systematic Musicology Specialization) from UCLA. He resides in Euclid, Ohio.
email: kluth (dot) aj (at) gmail (dot) com
AJ Kluth 