Joachim Kühn French Trio – The Way

Joachim Kühn’s relationship with France goes back a long way. The pianist, now in his eighties, lived in France in the 60s and 70s and performed with French musicians such as Martial Solal, Jean-Luc Ponty or Michel Portal.

For many years, he played in a magnificent equilateral trio with French bassist Jean-François Jenny-Clark and Swiss drummer Daniel Humair. More recently, he has recorded with the French string quartet IXI and in quartet with Christophe Monniot, Sébastien Boisseau and Christophe Marguet. What’s more, he is clearly the German musician who plays most often in France, where he is very familiar with the current jazz scene.

So, it’s hardly surprising that he has formed a new trio with two French musicians who could be his sons. The eponymous title track is even a collective composition by the three musicians, demonstrating the empathy that reigns within this group. The other themes are written by the pianist himself, one of them by Ornette Coleman, with whom Kühn is one of the few pianists to have played. Joachim Kühn‘s musical universe is the main focus here, but his two young companions are far from being a mere foil.

On the contrary, they bring to their leader a freshness and dynamism that the pianist tirelessly seeks in all the contexts in which he plays. This is a very different trio from the one Kühn leads with two other younger musicians: Canadian bassist Chris Jennings and German drummer Eric Schaefer.

Here we find all the qualities that make Kühn such a recognizable pianist: vigorous, often rapid phrasing, a touch of great sensitivity, sometimes abrupt, sometimes dreamy, an unshakeable rhythmic foundation thanks to a powerful left hand, fluidity and freedom of expression in the improvisations… It’s not hard to imagine that Thibaut Cellier – best known for his work with the group Papanosh – and Sylvain Darrifourcq – now a household name, having made a name for himself as a member of Emile Parisien’s quartet, then solo and in a variety of contexts – have long dreamed of accompanying a musician like Joachim Kühn, who didn’t choose them by chance. In a landscape where piano/bass/drums trios abound on both sides of the Atlantic, the trio formed by Joachim Kühn, Thibaut Cellier and Sylvain Darrifourcq asserts a real identity right from this first recording, and in the space of four tracks ranging from almost eight minutes to just over fourteen, sets the bar very high both in terms of interaction and the beauty of an aesthetic that is both resolutely modern and rooted in the European jazz tradition of recent decades. Remarkable!