Artists | Thomas Lehn (DE/AT)

Artist’s website: thomaslehn.com


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Thomas Lehn (born 1958 in Fröndenberg, Germany) is a German piano and synthesizer player.
He studied recording engineering at the Music Academy of Detmold in Germany, and then classical piano and jazz piano at the Music Academy of Cologne.
Since 1982 he has been playing concerts as an interpreting pianist, performing both contemporary new music and music of the classical and romantical period.
In 1989 he initiated the chamber ensemble Trio Dario and four years later the Mengano Quartett, performing compositions of the contemporary avant-garde.

Developed parallel to his work as a pianist, since the early 1990s his major and widely known work has been performing and producing live-electronic music.
The electronic equipment he uses consists of analogue synthesizers of the late 1960s, and since 1994 in particular the EMS Synthi A. Besides the substantial characteristics of its analogue sound synthesis, the facilities of this modular instrument - for example to modify electronic sounds very directly as well as to combine and to control several parameters of the sound synthesis at the same time - allows him to spontaneously act and react in close contact with the various structural degrees of the musical process.
In 2000 his solo album Feldstärken has been released on Random Acoustics.

His ensemble activities include duetts with: Gerry Hemingway and Marcus Schmickler, whos CDs Tom & Gerry and Bart has been released on Erstwhile Records; Günter Christmann, who published the CD temps durée on his own label edition explico; Eugene Chadbourne and Paul Lovens, with whom he published c inside and Achtung on grob. Other duett partners are Italian violinist Tiziana Bertoncini, Swiss saxophonist Urs Leimgruber and French pianist Frédéric Blondy.

Major trio collaborations are Konk Pack with Tim Hodgkinson and Roger Turner, Toot with Phil Minton and Axel Dörner, Thermal with John Butcher and Andy Moor, Futch with Jon Rose and Johannes Bauer.

Larger ensembles are the Vario 34 sextet with Günter Christmann, Alexander Frangenheim, Mats Gustafsson, Paul Lovens and Christian Munthe, and MIMEO, the Music in Movement Electronic Orchestra.

More recent projects are the ensemble]h[iatus, an ensemble for interpretation and improvisation of contemporary music (in collaboration with Le Quan Ninh, Martine Altenburger a.m.o.), Close Up a trio with Bertrand Gauguet and Franz Hautzinger, as well as a trio with Günter Christmann and Roger Turner, and ITI, a quartet with Ken Vandermark, Johannes Bauer and Paal Nilssen-Love.