JOACHIM KUBOWITZ

Photos: Manfred Pollert
JOACHIM KUBOWITZ AKA MONSIER KUBO was born and raised in the Rhine-Neckar Delta, in Ludwigshafen am Rhein. American clubs and the "Haus der Jugend" (Youth Center) with its then-legendary folk festival were right on his doorstep.

Fascinated by the sound of the guitar since 1972, he explored a wide variety of genres as a horn player: from early music with the Renaissance lute, to folk, New German Wave, and jazz on guitar and bass (at the time, a Danelectro converted to fretless). He played various bands, first in Mannheim/Ludwigshafen and then in Bremen while studying at the University of Art and Music.


In 1990 he went to Cologne and founded a graphic design studio with his friend Willi Hölzel.

From Cologne he then toured for several years with Bärbel Nolden and Roland Schriefer as Armes Frau Doktor Nolden and the Doktor Nolden's Heart Klaps Band as a Dadaist music cabaret across various cabaret stages in Germany.


In 2004 he founded the project Warum erst jetzt together with singer and guitarist Rainer Mike Walter and produced two albums together with Christian Krebs (Cajon) and Sebastian Reimann (violin): Mit leichtem Gepäck and the EP Einzeln und frei.

Since then, he has increasingly written his own songs and in 2019 founded the FONDATION KUBO together with Lotta Corradini (violin and vocals), Bernd Spehl (clarinet) and Dagmar Hagmann (vocals and recitation), with which he has since released two albums and a single.


In 2024, the collaboration with jazz trumpeter Bruno Leicht began with a program featuring film, chanson, and jazz classics: SONGS WITHOUT A PERMANENT ABODE. In December, he and two other jazz musicians will premiere I AM NOT YOUR NEGRO. BLACK MUSIC, BLACK POWER. To mark the 100th birthday of James Baldwin.