Joachim Kühn

His playing defies all categorization, and has earned him a place as a world class musician. He hasalready left his mark on contemporary jazz and given it new direction. The musical cosmopolitanJoachim Kühn sees himself as part of the jazz tradition, connected to European concert music and yetdirectly indebted to a contemporary musical language.

He displays vehemence and sensibility, a virtuoso technique and imagination and an unfailing sense ofdynamics. Be it in his interaction with long-time musical partners, in ever new and challenging musicalconstellations, or alone in his solo performances, Kühn always manages to make his concerts into aunique experience.

Even if some of the stations on his path from Leipzig, where Kühn was born in 1944, through his timein France and America may seem like diversions; his musical career not only displays cohesion, but alsoan inner logic that only becomes truly apparent with hindsight.

Kühn, who already enjoyed a first-class classical training and was performing as a concert pianist at anearly age, developed an enthusiasm for jazz under the influence of his older brother, clarinettist RolfKühn. Only 17 years old, he decided to become a jazz musician. His first trio, formed in 1964, playedmusic that was way ahead of its time in its openness to free improvisation.

In 1966, Joachim Kühn defected to West Germany after playing at a competition for young jazzmusicians organised by Friedrich Gulda. In the same year, he performed with his brother at the BerlinerJazztage and at the Newport Jazz Festival. Directly after the successful US concert, Bob Thiele producedan album for Impulse with the dream line-up of the Kühn brothers and Coltrane-bassist JimmyGarrison.

Joachim moved to Paris in 1968, where he played with such stylistically diverse musicians as GatoBarbieri, Don Cherry, Michel Portal, Slide Hampton and Phil Woods. In the early seventies, he becameintensely involved with electric keyboards. Yet, he was always working in an acoustic context along withhis work in (electric) bands like Jean-Luc Ponty or Association P.C. His trio with bassist Jean-FrançoisJenny-Clark and drummer Daniel Humair dates back to these early Paris days.

In the second half of the seventies, Joachim Kühn immersed himself in the West-Coast fusion scenewhere he played with musicians like Alphonse Mouzon, Billy Cobham, Eddie Gomez and MichaelBrecker. Even a saxophone player like Joe Henderson did not want to record his album “Black Narcissus”without Kühn. After a short stint in New York, the pianist then moved to Hamburg at the beginning ofthe 1980’s.This time-period saw the beginning of his concentration on the acoustic piano.

In 1985, back in Paris, he reactivated the trio with Jean-François Jenny-Clark and Daniel Humair, aband that counted internationally as one of the leading piano trios, until the tragic early death of J.-F.Jenny-Clark in 1998. A (lasting) collaboration with studio-electronics specialist Walter Quintus at themixing board resulted in the music for the ballet “Dark” for choreographer Carolyn Carlson, the CD“Get Up Early” and music for a piece of the same name for the Tanz-Forum Cologne.

In 1997, Joachim Kühn composed and played the music for “Citizen Kane”, also a dance piece byJoachim Ulrich for the Tanz-Forum Cologne.In 1990, in the first few months following the collapse ofthe Berlin Wall Joachim Kühn played in East Germany again, for the first time in 24 years.

The year 1991 saw the realization of two celebrated large projects: a production of the trioKühn/Humair/Jenny-Clark with the WDR big band, as well as an all-star band featuring (among others)Rolf Kühn, Randy Brecker, Palle Mikkelborg, Albert Mangelsdorff, Joe Lovano and Christof Lauer.

In the same year, the pianist finished a commission for the festival in Grenoble. Among the manyrecordings by Joachim Kühn in the nineties, we find albums like “Thinking Jazz” with the singer EarthaKitt, as well as the solo album “Famous Melodies” on which the pianist surprised his audience with hisnew treatments of melodies from the repertoire of German popular music.

In 1995 his French/Swiss/German trio recorded the CD “Dreigroschenoper” with original, jazz-inspiredinterpretations of Kurt Weill’s music, a music that had already been part of the repertoire of his first1960’s Est German trio.

Joachim’s family collaboration has never broken off since the legendary 1960’s cross-boarderperformances in East German concert halls with Rolf Kühn û then already living in West Germany. Thetwo brothers can be heard on numerous albums: the first class clarinet player and the exceptionalpianist. The family portfolio ranges from the re-release titled “For Two Brothers” (1997) to the duoalbum “Love Stories” (2004).

One of the large formations that Kühn works very closely with is the NDR radio big band, acollaboration that has resulted in a number of ambitious projects. In 1994 the project “Europeana”arranged and directed by Michael Gibbs for Kühn with the NDR Radio Philharmonic and prominent guestsoloists, placed the pianist in the midst of a great manifesto for a European jazz music.

June 1996 saw the first meeting between Joachim Kühn and Ornette Coleman. The free jazz icon hadinvited Kühn to a duo concert. The sensational and enthusiastically welcomed performance at the Arenadi Verona was followed by a concert in front of a passionate audience at the Leipziger Jazz Tage, a liverecording of which was released as the album “Colors”.

Since this time, Kühn has worked repeatedly with Ornette, as a duo as well as a member of the alto-player’s bands, performing in large concert halls, as well as at endless private sessions at Ornette’sstudio in New York. Since the nineties, and not least due to Ornette Colman’s encouragement, Kühn hasstarted involving himself again intensely with the music he grew up with, and that influenced himstrongly in his younger years: European music, especially the music of Johann Sebastian Bach.

In 1998 he began a collaboration that initially seemed unusually courageous and daring to both parties,and later turned out to be extremely successful: His projects with the Leipzig Thomaner-Choir directedby Georg Christoph Biller. Initially conceived for the Leipziger Jazztage, the project “Bach Now û Motetsand improvisation” performed in the Nikolaikirche and Thomaskirche, both former working-places ofBach in Leipzig, as well as in large concert halls.

The death of J.-F. Jenny-Clark left a gap that could not be filled, so Kühn developed new trio conceptsthat he put into practice with American and European musicians. The pianist also started adding thealto sax to his performances.

Parallel to his US-trio with bassist Scott Colley or Charnett Moffett and drummer Horacio “El Negro”Hernandez (the results are recorded on the album “Universal Time”, 2001), he created the EuropeanTrio with Jean-Paul Celea on bass and Wolfgang Reisinger on drums the (the 2005 CD “Poison” focuseson the theme of hallucinogenic drugs in jazz and rock songs).

The 1999 solo album “The Diminished Augmented System” presents Joachim Kühn's concept, whichreceived the same name. “Allegro Vivace” (ACT 9750-2, 2005) in the ACT-Edition “Piano Works”contains his convincing and highly original interpretations of music by François Couperin, JohannSebastian Bach, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Ornette Coleman, as well as his own compositions.

In the second half of the nineties, Kühn began working with the West African percussionist MoussaSissoko. The CD “Ala Tamala” (1998) adds Walter Quintus on the soundboard to form another creativetrio. Transcending world-music clichés, Joachim Kühn has always been interested in expanding sound,and in meeting musicians from all parts of the world. In this context, it is no big surprise that even theArabian oud and a grand piano blend beautifully, even though they were originally created for verydifferent tonal systems.

Kühn bridges the cultural divide together with oud virtuoso Rabih Abou Khalil and percussionist JarrodChagwin (2005 CD “Journey to the Centre of an Egg”). Moroccan Majid Bekkas, who sings and plays thebass-like African lute called guembri, and Spanish drummer Ramon Lopez, are Kühn’s partners in hislatest trio (CD "Kalimba" ACT 9456-2, 2007).

In intense interaction, the three musicians have developed a sound that seems as far removed from theconventional piano trio format as Ornette Coleman is from traditional jazz, and yet this new band is acontinuation of this history in a world of cultures moving closer to each other despite the ongoingconflicts.Joachim Kühn has reached a stage of maturity, and remains nonetheless open for newencounters.

Technique has long ceased to be a challenge. One of the great piano virtuosos of our time, he is nomore interested in showing his chops. His focus is on communicating the depth of emotionalexperience. Joachim Kühn’s work is centred on the pure quality of the music.