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Joachim Kuhn

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

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

Even if some of the stations on his path from Leipzig, where Kühn was born in 1944, through his time in France and America may seem like diversions; his musical career not only displays cohesion, but also an 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 an early age, developed an enthusiasm for jazz under the influence of his older brother, clarinettist Rolf Kühn. Only 17 years old, he decided to become a jazz musician. His first trio, formed in 1964, played music 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 jazz musicians organised by Friedrich Gulda. In the same year, he performed with his brother at the Berliner Jazztage and at the Newport Jazz Festival. Directly after the successful US concert, Bob Thiele produced an album for Impulse with the dream line-up of the Kühn brothers and Coltrane-bassist Jimmy Garrison.

Joachim moved to Paris in 1968, where he played with such stylistically diverse musicians as Gato Barbieri, Don Cherry, Michel Portal, Slide Hampton and Phil Woods. In the early seventies, he became intensely involved with electric keyboards. Yet, he was always working in an acoustic context along with his work in (electric) bands like Jean-Luc Ponty or Association P.C. His trio with bassist Jean-François Jenny-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 scene where he played with musicians like Alphonse Mouzon, Billy Cobham, Eddie Gomez and Michael Brecker. 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 of the 1980’s.This time-period saw the beginning of his concentration on the acoustic piano.

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Album Review

Don Cherry: Where Is Brooklyn? & Eternal Rhythm - Revisited

Read "Where Is Brooklyn? & Eternal Rhythm - Revisited" reviewed by Stefano Merighi


Nel percorso artistico di molti, è decisivo il rapporto tra emancipazione ed auto-affermazione. Il jazz moderno è spesso testimone di una dialettica feconda tra individualismo e trama collettiva, ma è dirimente il tema dell'originalità. “Se sei come tutti gli altri, a che serve il jazz?," diceva spesso Monk. E un vero “percorso," costellato da innumerevoli stazioni, è stato quello di Don Cherry, mai del tutto soddisfatto delle sue conquiste, costantemente messe in discussione. Ammesso e non concesso che Cherry sia ...

2
Radio & Podcasts

Joachim Kuhn, Day & Taxi & Java Quartet

Read "Joachim Kuhn, Day & Taxi & Java Quartet" reviewed by Maurice Hogue


German pianist/alto player Joachim Kuhn arrived in Paris in the late '60s; that city was the epicenter of an explosion in free jazz, fueled by several musicians from America (many of them from the AACM) and a desire among European players to push their music forward. One concert that Kuhn played at in the fall of that year was recorded, and now 52 years later it has been released. Scream For Peace is one of the feature recordings in this ...

14
Multiple Reviews

Solo Statesmen

Read "Solo Statesmen" reviewed by Geno Thackara


Joachim Kühn Touch the Light ACT Music 2021 Centuries-old classical, rock from recent decades, jazz staples both classic and modern—to Joachim Kühn it's all just good music regardless of style, and it seems any material can be suited to the mood at hand when he's in a mind to play with it. This recital is indeed radiant in the most soft-spoken and thoughtful of ways. Touch the Light is as exquisitely crafted as you'd hope ...

8
Album Review

Joachim Kuhn: Melodic Ornette Coleman: Piano Works XIII

Read "Melodic Ornette Coleman: Piano Works XIII" reviewed by Karl Ackermann


Reportedly, Ornette Coleman did not have a great affinity for pianists, but it was the instrument--rather than the musicians--that put Coleman off. As an innovator in free jazz, Coleman found the chordal instrument too intrusive and preferred a more sympathetic bass/soloist interaction. Coleman did record with pianists Geri Allen and Paul Bley, but he established a regular touring schedule of duo performances with Joachim Kühn. Coleman and Kühn only recorded together on Colors: Live from Leipzig (Verve, 1997). That outing ...

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Album Review

Joachim Kuhn: Love & Peace

Read "Love & Peace" reviewed by Karl Ackermann


The German ACT label achieved global recognition when they issued the Esbjorn Svensson Trio album Viaticum (2005) and they warrant broader discovery by U.S. jazz fans. Though their country's best known label casts a global shadow over its competition, the ACT catalog has included Richie Beirach, Lars Danielsson, Vijay Iyer, Manu Katche, Rudresh Mahanthappa, Bugge Wesseltoft, Tore Brunborg and a host of other well-known artists. Among those talents is one the finest--but under-recognized--jazz pianists of the past half-century. Joachim Kühn ...

4
Album Review

Joachim Kuhn: Voodoo Sense

Read "Voodoo Sense" reviewed by Ian Patterson


The fourth outing from German pianist Joachim Kühn, Moroccan vocalist and guembri (bass lute) player Majid Bekkas, and Spanish drummer Ramon Lopez continues the trio's exploration into free-jazz and North African roots that began with Kalimba ( ACT Music, 2007). The percussion and rhythms of the Magreb were more prominent on Out of the Desert (ACT Music, 2009) which featured a cast of Berber musicians, while Chalaba (ACT Music, 2011) returned to the stripped down trio format. Here, Kühn again ...

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Album Review

Joachim Kühn / Majid Bekkas / Ramon Lopez: Chalaba

Read "Chalaba" reviewed by Bruce Lindsay


The sleeve notes to Chalaba describe German pianist and alto saxophonist Joachim Kühn as a veteran “of the conscious avant-garde." This is certainly accurate--he's worked with Archie Shepp and Ornette Coleman, among others--but the description sounds rather forbidding, a portent of some serious and complex sounds for the mind but not the body. Thankfully it misleads: for while Kühn, vocalist and guembri player Majid Bekkas, and percussionist Ramon Lopez do produce some serious music, they also create some splendidly joyous ...

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