Joachim Kühn

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Joachim Kühn at the solo concert in the Stadtkirche Darmstadt on January 28, 2016

Joachim Kühn (born March 15, 1944 in Leipzig ) is a German jazz pianist ; "Today he shapes the German jazz world like no other."

Joachim Kühn, March 2010

Live and act

Kühn was trained as a classical pianist. At a young age he emerged as a concert pianist, but under the influence of his older brother, the clarinetist Rolf Kühn , he began to become more and more enthusiastic about jazz . After a quintet project with Ernst-Ludwig Petrowsky , Heinz Becker , Klaus Koch and the drummer Wolfgang Henschel (1962) and regular appearances in the Werner Pfüller Quintet (1963), he played in the big band of Klaus Lenz and in 1964 in Prague . In the same year he appeared at the Warsaw Jazz Jamboree and founded a first trio (with Klaus Koch and Reinhard Schwartz) that was very influential on the jazz scene in the GDR, with whom he turned to free improvisation. In 1966 he moved to West Germany and in the same year performed with his brother Rolf at both the Newport Jazz Festival and the Berlin Jazz Days . In 1968 he moved to Paris . After groups in the free jazz idiom, in which Kühn played with Eje Thelin , Jacques Thollot and Michel Portal and also appeared as an alto saxophonist, during the 1970s he mainly concentrated on projects in the jazz rock area, among others. a. with Jean-Luc Ponty , Philip Catherine , Alphonse Mouzon , Pierre Courbois , Jan Akkerman , Billy Cobham , Zbigniew Seifert and Aldo Romano . He lived in California for some time in the mid-1970s.

He achieved his greatest reputation as a jazz piano virtuoso in the trio, which has existed for over a decade since 1985, with the bassist Jean-François Jenny-Clark and the drummer Daniel Humair . He is one of the few pianists with whom Ornette Coleman has performed. CD recordings that are particularly interesting in terms of sound were made together with producer Walter Quintus . Then he played on the one hand with his new trio (with Jean-Paul Céléa and Wolfgang Reisinger ), but also in a quintet with Dominique Pifarély and Rudi Mahall , on the other hand he is increasingly opening up to world music and has been performing in the trio with Majid Bekkas and Ramón López since 2007 ( but also with Rabih Abou-Khalil ). Since 2010 Kühn has also played in a trio with Christian Lillinger and Sébastien Boisseau . His solo album Melodic Ornette Coleman was placed on the list of the best of the German Record Critics' Award in the 2nd quarter of 2019 : “The dedication to the idol turns Joachim Kühn into a self-portrait that reveals mastery in its thematic penetration, but above all a deep devotion to the music."

Kühn now lives in Paris and Ibiza .

Prizes and awards

Joachim Kühn and his brother Rolf (clarinet) received the Jazz Echo Prize 2011 for their life's work in June 2011. In May 2014 he received the Jazz Echo Prize 2014 in the category Instrumentalist of the Year National Piano / Keyboards. His album Colors (with Ornette Coleman) received the 1998 German Record Critics' Prize .

Discography (selection)

Solo piano

  • Solos (EPM-188, Paris 1971)
  • Solo Now (with Albert Mangelsdorff , Gunter Hampel and Pierre Favre ; MPS 15457 LP, 1976)
  • Charisma (1977)
  • Snow in the Desert (1980)
  • United Nations (1981)
  • Distance ( CMP 1984)
  • Situations (1988)
  • Dynamics (CPM-LC 6055, Zerkall Tonstudio, 1990)
  • The Diminished Augmented System (1999)
  • Piano Works I - Allegro Vivace (ACT, 2005)
  • Melodic Ornette Coleman: Piano Works XIII (ACT, 2019)

Trio with Daniel Humair and Jean-François Jenny-Clark

  • Easy to Read (OWL Records 043CD, Paris, 1985)
  • Joachim Kühn Birthday Edition (ACT, recordings from the Berlin Jazz Days 1987 and 1995)
  • 9-11 PM Town Hall (1988)
  • From Time to Time Free (1988)
  • Live Théâtre de la Ville, Paris, 1989 (1989)
  • Carambolage with the WDR Big Band (1991)
  • Usual Confusion (1993)
  • Triple Entente (Mercury / PolyGram 1997)

Other occupations

As a sideman

literature

  • Joachim Kühn, From Leipzig into the world . In R. Bratfisch (ed.): Free tones. The GDR jazz scene. Links, Berlin 2005, ISBN 3-86153-370-7 , pp. 137-146

Documentaries

Web links

Commons : Joachim Kühn  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ NDR about Joachim Kühn ( Memento from March 15, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
  2. ↑ Bert Noglik : Best List 2-2019. May 15, 2019, accessed August 17, 2019 .
  3. ↑ plus the album Europeana with the NDR Radiophilharmonie under Michael Gibbs from 1994
  4. ↑ only on 2 pieces, in 3 more pieces around portal and z. T. Marc Ducret extended
  5. ↑ Meeting (FonoForum)
personal data
SURNAME Kühn, Joachim
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German jazz pianist
DATE OF BIRTH March 15, 1944
PLACE OF BIRTH Leipzig