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Biography
Born in Leipzig on March 15, 1944, Joachim Kühn gave his young-age 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 and started leading traditional and mainstream combos very early. In 1961 he became a professional jazz musician. With a trio of his own, founded in 1964, he presented the first European-rooted free jazz in the GDR. In 1966 he did not return to his country from an international competition organized by Friedrich Gulda in Vienna. He settled in Hamburg where he formed a free-jazz quartet with his brother and they presented themselves at the Berliner Jazztage and the Newport Jazz Festival. In New York, produced by by Bob Thiele, the brothers Kühn recorded with Coltrane-bassist Jimmy Garrison for the Impulse label.
Living in Paris since 1968, Joachim Kühn worked with numerous musicians of different styles, e.g. Gato Barbieri, Don Cherry, Karl Berger, Slide Hampton, Philly Joe Jones, Phil Woods, Michel Portal, et al. A member of Jean Luc Ponty´s Experience and Association P.C., he turned to electronic keyboards in the early 70´s and became one of the protagonists of European rock-jazz. At the same time, he also led acoustic trios. One of these was completed by Jean-Francois Jenny-Clark (b) and Daniel Humair (dr), who were to cross his path again and again in years to come. Le Monde, in those days, called him "Europe´s most interesting commuter between jazz and rock".
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