The clarinettist Rolf Kühn practiced until the shot – if possible for two hours a day. After all, music and curiosity don’t end just because you grow old yourself.
Rolf Kühn, the clarinetist, was the first to go west. Soon had success in ensembles of the newly founded Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk or as a soloist with Kurt Henkels in the Leipzig Radio Dance Orchestra. His brother Joachim, the pianist, followed him a good decade later. Migration was inevitable. Jazz, that was America, Benny Goodman, Buddy DeFranco, Woody Herman. Don’t swing in the Soviet occupation zone.