JAZZ - JOACHIM KUHN IN CONCERT

Joachim Kühn is a musician with an extraordinary stylistic range. His compositions and improvisations draw on both European and American sources, and his musical vocabulary has been born of not only his commitment to the language of contemporary sound but also to the traditions of the concert hall and to the rich and varied history of jazz. His innumerable encounters with many of the greats include John Coltrane and especially Ornette Coleman, as well as the Thomaner Choir of Leipzig. They have left their indelible mark on his music.

The solo concert Kühn gave during the 1999 Munich Klaviersommer demonstrated his unique virtuosity and generated extraordinary excitement.

Joachim Kühn (born March 15, 1944) is a German jazz pianist.

Kühn was a musical prodigy and gave his debut as a concert pianist and studied classical piano and composition with Arthur Schmidt-Elsey. Influenced by his elder brother, clarinet-player Rolf Kühn, he simultaneously got interested in jazz. In 1961 he became a professional jazz musician. With a trio of his own, founded in 1964, he presented the first free jazz in the GDR. In 1966 he left the country and settled in Hamburg. Together with his brother he played at the Newport Jazz Festival and recorded with Jimmy Garrison for Bob Thiele's Impulse! Records.

Living in Paris since 1968, Kühn worked with Don Cherry, Karl Berger, Slide Hampton, Phil Woods, Michel Portal, Barre Phillips, Eje Thelin and Jean-Luc Ponty. As a member of Pierre Courbois's Association P.C., he turned to electronic keyboards. During the second half of the 70's he lived in California and joined the West Coast fusion scene and recorded with Alphonse Mouzon, Billy Cobham, Michael Brecker, and Eddie Gomez.

Having settled near Paris again, he played in an acoustic trio with Jean-François Jenny Clark and Daniel Humair since 1985. During Summer 1996, he joined Ornette Coleman during two festival concerts at Verona and Leipzig festivals which opened the way for his Diminished Augmented System. In the last years he toured with Rabih Abou-Khalil.

Source: Wikipedia