Joachim Kühn’s 80th Birthday

Born in Leipzig, he managed to emigrate to the West in 1966 with the help of his brother, the internationally known clarinettist Rolf Kühn (1929-2022). After successful appearances at the Berliner Jazztage and the Newport Festival, the two brothers made a record for the trendsetting label »Impulse!«. Like Rolf, who conducted the NDR television orchestra back in the 1960s and regularly worked with the NDR Bigband after that, Joachim Kühn has maintained a close connection with the NDR since that time.

His career took him from Paris, Los Angeles, New York and Hamburg to Ibiza, which has been his creative refuge for some 30 years. Pianist Kühn breaks open every category in the boundless world of music, and in dialogue with big names he has become one of them, be it with his brother Rolf, with Ornette Coleman, Archie Shepp or Pharoah Sanders. Nor are his partners confined to jazz: Kühn has played together with the Choir of St Thomas’s, Leipzig, as well as with musicians from other cultures such as Moroccan guembri master Majid Bekkas or the Lebanese oud virtuoso Rabih-Abou Khalil.

This concert unites Joachim Kühn with a like-minded artist in the shape of Michael Wollny, who is significantly younger. They share a high opinion of one another, as well as an unbroken interest in musical adventures. And with his New Trio – the other members are Chris Jennings and Eric Schaefer – he continues what he started back in the 1960s and has gone on evolving tirelessly ever since: exploring new musical spaces, developing freedom and improvising with others in a celebration of the moment.