Joachim Kühn - The Way (2024) [Hi-Res]

Each new band in Joachim Kühn's creative career has marked a new departure, a broadening of his horizons. Now, in double bassist Thibault Cellier and drummer Sylvain Darrifourcq, the pianist has found two musicians with whom he can achieve the things that are important to him at this stage of his life, to take a path which allows him even more freedom, which is to be taken – in his words – “the French way, with lightness, speed and elegance”.

Playing in the context of a piano trio runs right through the pianist's oeuvre. Kühn’s way was groundbreaking from the start and the first trio, formed in Leipzig in 1964. The trio he started in Paris in 1974 with Jean-François Jenny-Clark and Daniel Humair went on to play a part in writing the history of jazz for the next two and a half decades. There have also been astonishing developments and discoveries since then. The trio with Majid Bekkas and Ramón López successfully bridged the gap between jazz, European, African and Arabic cultures. And the New Trio with Chris Jennings and Eric Schaefer developed a style of playing with clear contours and a wide-open approach which never failed to fascinate.

The French Trio continues in this line, and yet also does something new. Today, what concerns Joachim Kühn is both freedom and spontaneous structuring. And also, as with all of the very great role models, especially in their later creative phases – Bach, Coltrane, Ornette Coleman and Joachim’s brother Rolf Kühn – to find the way that leads straight to the essential, to the heart of things. And into the open.

Joachim Kühn / piano
Thibault Cellier / double bass
Sylvain Darrifourcq / drums