Jazz pianist Achim Kaufmann was born into a musical family in Aachen, Germany in 1962. His father was a conductor and his mom, a pianist. He became interested in jazz music as a teenager and began composing his own songs. He attended the Conservatory in Cologne before he continued his postgraduate studies in Canada at the Banff Center for the Arts. There, he studied under masters like Dave Holland, Steve Coleman, George Lewis, Steve Lacy, and Muhal Richard Abrams. He worked with a variety of musicians in the 1980s before he began performing his own compositions in his own bands. He relocated to Amsterdam, the Netherlands, in 1996 where he became a part of the city’s esteemed improvisational scene until 2009. He released the album Weave in 1997, followed a year later by Double Exposure. In the late 1990s and 2000s, Achim led two groups with reed player Michael Moore: Trio Kamosc and Gueuledeloup Quartet. Kaufmann began touring internationally in 2002 and releasing well-received albums such as the Definition of a Toy (2003) and Kwast (2004), his first of five albums with clarinetist/saxophonist Frank Gratkowski and bassist Wilbert De Joode. Moving to Berlin, Germany, he has continued to collaborate with musicians in a variety of bands including Trio Grünen, Oni Kramler and others. Kaufmann was awarded the German SWR Jazz Award in 2001, and the prestigious Albert Mangelsdorff award in 2015. In 2020, he released the albums Flatbosc & Cautery (with Gratkowski, De Joode, and Tony Buck) and Kay-El (with Gratkowski, de Joode, Darren Moore, Yong Yandsen, and Kok Siew Wai).
