The French jazz scene has a vitality, an originality and a do-it- all and do-it-anyway mentality about it right now. It is French musicians who are blazing the new trails for contemporary European jazz. There is a wonderful open-mindedness towards all musical cultures, genres and tendencies; and yet French musicians also give off the sense of having a proper grounding in their own tradition. A musician who represents all of these tendencies ‘par excellence’ is saxophonist Emile Parisien. Born in Cahors in the wine-growing region of the Lot, he is a jazz visionary. He may have one foot in that ancient soil, but his gaze is firmly fixed on the future. The leading French newspaper Le Monde has called him “the best new thing that has happened in European jazz for a long time,” while the Hamburg radio station NDR made the point of telling its listeners to give Parisien their “undivided attention.”

The reference points on Parisien’s personal musical map are very widely spread indeed. They range from the popular folk traditions of his homeland to the compositional rigour of contemporary classical music, and also to the abstraction of free jazz. And yet everything he does has a naturalness and authenticity about it. Rather than appearing pre-meditated or constrained, his music has a flow, he traverses genres with a remarkable fleetness of foot and an effortless inevitability.

What is it that makes the simple urgency of Parisien’s music quite so enjoyable? How does he manage to combine a provocative and anarchic streak with such a captivating sense of swing? Anyone who has seen and heard him on stage will know: it is because he lives his jazz with body and soul, because there is an authenticity and honesty inflecting every breath and every note.

"What this Nice-born Parisian coaxes out of the piano accordion is something the likes of which has never been heard before. You can tell it is a future legend who is playing here!" – Süddeutsche Zeitung.
The French accordion player, singer and composer Vincent Peirani was born on 24.4.1980 in Nice. At the age of 11 he began playing the accordion, initially classical music. As a teenager he already won numerous international awards. At 16 he discovered jazz and soon took up the study of jazz in Paris. At the beginning he faced scepticism with his accordion and his classical training, but he quickly convinced the critics with an entirely new way of looking at the instrument, made a name for himself in France's jazz scene and was soon playing with the creme de la creme of French jazz, the likes of Michel Portal, Daniel Humair, Renaud Garcia Fons, Louis Sclavis and Vincent Courtois. Parallel to that he pursued many of his own projects, drawing from the widest range of genres – from jazz, chanson and world music through to classic and even heavy rock. Since 2011, Peirani has been playing regularly in the quartet of the Korean singer Youn Sun Nah, the most successful female jazz artist in France in recent years. Through this engagement he also made the acquaintance of Swedish guitarist Ulf Wakenius and ultimately the boss of the ACT label Siggi Loch. Peirani played on the Wakenius album "Vagabond" recorded in February 2012, also astonishing and enthralling live audiences everywhere. "Thrill Box" came out in May 2013 and was Vincent Peirani's first album as a leader – star-studded with pianist Michael Wollny, bassist Michel Benita and saxophonists Michel Portal and Émile Parisien. The album showcases the entire wealth of facets of Peirani's musical influences, and reveals more impressively than ever before what an intelligent and artful composer he is, and what a masterful and profoundly musical instrumentalist and storyteller.

Joachim Kühn, born 15 March 1944 in Leipzig, is one of the few global German jazz stars. His piano playing defies categorisation and has blazed new trails for contemporary jazz. The musical citizen of the world Kühn considers himself bound to the jazz tradition, linked to European concert music, but most of all dedicated to a sound that is now. He reveals vehemence and sensitivity, masterful technique and imagination, an unmistakable feel for his keyboard and an unfailing sense of dynamics. Whether in the interplay with long-standing musician partners, in ever changing and often extraordinarily challenging band constellations or alone in his solo gigs, Joachim Kühn succeeds in making music an event.
Kühn has been leaving his mark on the international jazz scene since the 60s. As a 22 year-old, he took part in an international competition for young jazz musicians, and decided not to return to socialist East Germany. Instead he launched a global career. That same year his first album came out on the renowned label Impulse, after playing at the Newport Jazz Festival in the USA.
Since then he has played in often challenging constellations with musicians from all over the world, with the most diverse of musical backgrounds. He worked with distinguished free jazz exponents like Archie Shepp and Ornette Coleman, and with musicians the likes of Billy Cobham, Eddie Gomez, Michael Brecker and Joe Henderson in the 70s fusion scene of the American west coast. Then he formed an internationally leading piano trio in the 80s in Paris with the bassist Jean-François Jenny-Clark and the drummer Daniel Humair.
Just two years after the founding of ACT, he was the focal point of an all-star band in 1994, with, for example, Alfred Mangelsdorff, Klaus Doldinger, Django Bates and the Hannover Radio Philharmonic Orchestra. The large-scale manifesto that arose of a Europe-based jazz music "Europeana" also reflects Kühn's musical influences: Although dedicated to a contemporary jazz sound, he has always felt a connection to European concert music as well.
The genre-crossing concept is especially apparent in his solo playing, which has always been important to Joachim Kühn – and to a degree the true challenge among jazz pianists. So it is that on the solo album "Allegro Vivace" released by ACT in 2005, his own pieces are accompanied by compositions from Bach and Mozart, Coltrane and Coleman. This merging of such musical contrasts again illustrates Joachim Kühn's risk affinity and talent for improvisation.
He shows his virtuosity in duets as well, always with an attentive ear for his partner so they can interact on an equal footing. His collaborations with the up-and-coming pianist Michael Wollny ("Piano Works IX: Live at Schloss Elmau", 2009), the grandmaster of sax Heinz Sauer ("If (Blue) Then (Blue)", 2010) and Archie Shepp ("Wo!man", 2010 on Archieball) were all highly praised by critics. The former was even named Album of the Year by the French jazz magazine Jazzman.
His openness and spirit of discovery led Kühn to put together a trio, the likes of which had never been seen before. In 2003 he found two kindred spirits with regard to the desire to improvise, in the Moroccan Majid Bekkas, who plays the lute instruments guembri and oud, and the Spanish percussionist Ramon Lopez. And they brought with them their own cultural backgrounds and musical experiences. Their first album "Kalimba" in 2007 was followed by "Out Of The Desert" (2009), which was recorded in a session in the northern African desert with local musicians, and by "Chalaba" in 2011.
Considering this abundance of musical pioneers, international collaborations, and his for German jazz unparalleled status, it came as no surprise when Joachim Kühn was honoured with the ECHO Jazz for lifetime achievement in 2011, together with his brother Rolf. The second ECHO Jazz followed one year later. The collaboration of his "desert jazz" trio with the hr big band, "Out of the Desert live at Jazzfest Berlin", was distinguished as the Best Big Band Production.
On "Voodoo Sense", the fifth album with Majid Bekkas and Ramon Lopez, Kühn's respect for tradition is audible. Already the nearly 20-minute opener "Kulu Se Mama" – recorded together with Archie Shepp, a group of African percussionists and vocalists led by talking-drum maestro Kouassi Bessan Joseph – refers back to the Coltrane album of the same name from 1965. Whether with archaic world-music, the blues-soaked saxophone ballad "L’eternal Voyage" written especially for Shepp, studies of pianistic harmonics such as "Crossing The Mirror" or thundering drama such as the final piece "Firehorse" – with a little help from his friends, Kühn has once again taken another step in his search for the magic of his very own music, the Voodoo Sense as it were.
When Joachim Kühn celebrates his 70th birthday on 15 March 2014, he can look back on an amazing career as a pianist. But he wouldn't be Joachim Kühn if he wasn't still making new plans for the future.

The multi-instrumentalist from Bayonne, who had turned eighty just a few days before the interview, masters various clarinets and saxophones as well as the bandoneon, and is also recognized as a composer. His wit and wisdom, and the youthful energy and curiosity he brings to his astonishing improvisations are only some of the reasons Portal has enjoyed such a fruitful and enduring career. Having helped to kick start the Free Jazz movement in France in the Sixties, he went on to form „New Phonic Art“ to encourage collective improvisation and instant composing. After a rewarding collaboration with John Surman in 1970, Portal founded the long-lived Michel Portal Unit the following year, in order to encourage American and European musicians to play together in a freely improvised setting. Portal began composing music for soundtracks in the mid-1970s and later recorded an album of some of his favorite movie melodies called „Musiques de Cinémas“. During the following decades Portal increased his international reputation with various bands, concerts and recordings, often playing with Pierre Favre, Dave Liebman, Martial Solal, Mino Cinelu and Jack DeJohnette, but also with musicians from Minneapolis, MN.