Joachim Kühn Trio for Sunday – with Jean-Francois Jenny-Clark on bass – Daniel Humair on drums with guest Larry Schneider (on Miles’ Mood and In A Sentimental Mood) – all recorded at Jazzfest Berlin on November 6, 1987 for Radio Berlin.
From the ActMusic website blurb:
Joachim Kühn’s career is remarkable in the way it embraces different eras, countries and continents, and yet, despite the musical and political upheavals of the pianist’s eight decades, there is a constant: the pursuit of musical freedom. Born in Leipzig in 1944, he has had a homing instinct for the greats of the music since his earliest youth: John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman, Bach. His older brother, clarinettist Rolf Kühn, became his role model and later his musical partner. He had a long, intense and significant collaboration with his early idol Ornette Coleman. And his admiration for Johann Sebastian Bach became a powerful memory in his joint music-making with the choir from Bach’s own church, the Leipzig Thomanerchor. Joachim Kühn’s career in music has been so many-faceted, a brief summary will never do it justice: free jazz in the cauldron of the sixties in Paris, fusion music in California, modern jazz in New York, solos, duos, trios, countless records, and finally the decision to settle in Ibiza, which is the base from which the pianist travels the world.
For someone like Joachim Kühn, who lives one hundred per cent through his immersion in music, there is no standing still. He is driven by a force within which leads him to continue to develop all the time. It would be understandable if he were just to stand back and take pride in all that he has achieved – but he won’t. He has played with the elite of jazz, with musicians such as Ornette Coleman, Archie Shepp, Pharoah Sanders and Joe Henderson. He recorded “Impressions Of New York” with his brother Rolf and Coltrane’s bassist Jimmy Garrison. His trio with Daniel Humair and Jean-François Jenny-Clark became an integral part of European jazz history. And in the trios with Majid Bekkas / Ramón López and Rabih Abou-Khalil, he succeeded in opening up jazz to the cultures of the world. But for this pianist, the search is never-ending. He threw off all constraints and limits from the perspective of technique long ago. What matters to him, he says, is pure music. And to make it with the greatest urgency and truthfulness.
Okay – it’s Sunday. Relax and dive in.
