Joachim Kühn – Touch the Light (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 47:13 minutes | 416 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © ACT Music

“Maybe when I’m ninety…?” When Siggi Loch first floated the idea that Joachim Kühn might like to make an album of ballads, the pianist’s response was typically jocular, even defi-ant. That initial resistance didn’t last long, however. Kühn, now in his mid-seventies, soon started to settle down at the fine Steinway in his home – he keeps it impeccably tuned – to switch on his DAT recorder, and set to work. “The advantage of being here at home in Ibiza is that I can simply make a re-cording when I want to. When the feeling comes, I just re-cord,” Kühn reflects.
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Joachim Kühn – This Way Out (1973/2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 01:20:09 minutes | 1,47 GB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © MPS

Joachim Kühn is joined by Daniel Humair, one of Europe’s most celebrated drummers, along with bassist/cellist Peter Warren, whose play has graced the albums of such diverse greats as Clarla Bley and John Scofield. The impressionistic miniature Brother Rolph serves as an introduction, the up-tempo Byg Bridge spans over to the helter-skelter of Amok, while the well-named ballad She’s a Beauty precedes the straight-ahead swing of Spaced In. Kühn tenders a personal solo-rendering of the classic Body And Soul, then switches to alto sax on the harsh, ritualistic Phallic Dance. Juxtaposition features contrasting solo and group dynamics, and the trio show their standards chops on the medium-tempo All The Things You Are. The musical snapshot Paris 72 book-ends the 10 trio pieces. German saxophonist Gerd Dudek, whose playing credentials include Carla Bley and Don Cherry, joins the trio on the next six pieces. He takes up soprano on the Latin-like This Way Out, while he’s on tenor and Kühn on alto with hell-bent free solos on Do Dat Dudek. Sound Color One and Two are miniatures that explore the possibilities of musical textures. Other Way Out is a free dialogue between piano and soprano, and Unison Union brings the quartet together in a display of intuitive inspiration. 16 pieces of creative brilliance.
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Joachim Kühn – Playing Probabilities (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 36:19 minutes | 350 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © ACT Music

After many years of working as a musician and sound engineer, break two improvisers out of their usual roles: Joachim Kühn, Piano icon without limits, and Electronica-Experimentalist Klaus Scheuermann alias “Trummer schlunk” explore the Potential of the Unheard. It is a collaboration across generations, genre boundaries and long-established constellations.
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Joachim Kühn – Piano (1972/2014)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 39:42 minutes | 701 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © MPS

Pianist Joachim Kühn is one of the few global German jazz stars. With his playing style, which transcends all categories, he has made his mark as a world-class musician, and on contemporary jazz, blazing entirely new trails. The musical cosmopolitan Kühn sees himself in the tradition of jazz, and also in a close relationship with European concert music. But despite all this he is committed to a contemporary sound. He reveals vehemence and sensitivity, masterly craftsmanship and imagination, an unmistakable touch and an unerring sense of dynamics. In the interplay with musical partners of many years’ standing, in ever new and often unusually challenging constellations or on his own and his solo concerts, Joachim Kühn makes music an event. All his life Kühn has demonstrated curiosity, open-mindedness and a love of experimentation like few others. It was this intellectual flexibility that led the young East German classical pianist to jazz. After fleeing to the West in 1966, he quickly became one of the most important representatives of the jazz avant-garde in the scenes of Paris, Los Angeles, New York and Hamburg, constantly seeking encounters with the most diverse of musicians, from Michel Portal to Ornette Coleman, Archie Shepp, Jean-François Jenny-Clark, Daniel Humair, Joe Henderson, Michael Brecker and Rabih-Abou Khalil and the Germans Heinz Sauer and Michael Wollny. In June 2011, Kühn was awarded the Echo Jazz for his extraordinary life’s work.
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Joachim Kühn – Melodic Ornette Coleman – Piano Works XIII (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 53:30 minutes | 461 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © ACT Music

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 Kuhn. Coleman and Kühn only recorded together on Colors: Live from Leipzig (Verve, 1997). That outing saw the two artists take the decidedly idiosyncratic approach of working in separate spaces and only occasionally crossing paths. The German pianist now pays solo tribute to Coleman on Melodic Ornette Coleman: Piano Works XIII.
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Joachim Kühn – Love & Peace (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 46:38 minutes | 947 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © ACT Music

Love and peace. The program of this album by Joachim Kühn has the merit to be clear. With drummer Eric Schaefer and double bass player Chris Jennings, his trio formed in 2015, the German pianist, now 73, seems to have found a new playground in which the strength of his melodies proves central. Rather labelled as an avant-gardist—or even free—musician, Kühn, who has always rejected conventions throughout his extended career, is of course not sinking here into simplistic and plain music. Quite the contrary. Through rather concise themes, mostly original, aside from pieces from the Doors (The Crystal Ship), Mussorgsky (The old castle from Pictures at an exhibition) and Ornette Coleman (Night Plans), he lightens his improvisations and takes the time to play with space and even with silences. Released in 2016, Beauty & Truth, the first disc from the trio, already let you hear this somewhat uncommon Kühn. With Love & Peace, he found an inner peace which makes his music even more moving.
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Joachim Kühn – Hip Elegy (1976/2014)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 42:29 minutes | 822 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © MPS Records

German avant-garde jazz pianist Joachim Kühn relocated to California in the mid-1970s and teamed up with drummer Alphonse Mouzon on this 1977 release of atmospheric West Coast fusion. The two headliners are joined by an international cast of supporting musicians including bassist John Lee, Japanese trumpeter Terumasa Hino, Brazilian percussionist Nana Vasconcelos and British guitarist Philip Catherine.
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Joachim Kühn – Free Ibiza (2011)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 59:52 minutes | 536 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Outnote Records

German pianist Joachim Kühn could have had a career in classical music had he not early on developed an enthusiasm for jazz under the influence of his older brother, clarinettist Rolf Kühn. After leaving his natal Leipzig, then still under communist yoke, the young Bach fan arrived in Paris in 1968 in the midst of the free jazz movement. His meetings with Don Cherry, Aldo Romano, Gato Barbieri, Archie Shepp and Roswell Rudd were determining. “The spirit of jazz”, he confided, “is rebellious and free”. This became the leitmotiv of his entire career. In every configuration he played in, preferably small ones, Joachim Kühn made his independent voice heard. Transcending boarders, the interpret and composer alternated between duos with Ornette Coleman, encounters with the young classical music pianist Michael Wollny and the Mediterranean sounding trio he formed with Ramon Lopez and Majid Bekkas. Though undeniably open-minded, he was uncompromising on one essential point: sound. This obsession led him to develop his own musical model “The Diminished Augmented System” which from then on became his musical trademark. His style became marked by a powerful lyricism that is nowhere more evident than on his solo recordings.
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