ANDREAS KÖHS is a certified A-church musician and works as cantor and organist at the Ev.-luth. Dreikönigsgemeinde in Frankfurt am Main. In this position, he successfully continues the highly regarded musical tradition established by Prof. Helmut Walcha and Prof. Kurt Thomas, well beyond the borders of the city of Frankfurt am Main.
This includes his work as a concert organist as well as artistic director of the Kurt-Thomas-Kammerchores, collegium vocale francfurt, Kantorei Sachsenhausen, and Telemann-Ensemble Frankfurt.
For more information and all current concert program dates, please visit:
http://www.andreas-koehs.de
ANDREAS KÖHS was born in Siegen in 1965.
After completing his Abitur, he studied church music at the State University of Music and Performing Arts in Frankfurt am Main (with Prof. Edgar Krapp (organ) and Prof. Wolfgang Schäfer (choral conducting)) and passed the A-exam in 1989. This was followed by postgraduate studies in organ at the University of Music in Cologne with Peter Neumann, where he graduated with distinction in 1992. After a further one-year study in the organ master class of Prof. Dorthy de Rooij at the Royal Conservatory in Maastricht, Netherlands, he completed the concert exam in 1993.
His extensive repertoire includes, in addition to the complete organ works of Johann Sebastian Bach and Dietrich Buxtehude, all significant compositions of the so-called North German organ music (Tunder, Bruhns, Lübeck) as well as important organ works of the Romantic era – including the major chorale fantasies and free works of Max Reger (Fantasy and Fugue on B-A-C-H, Sonatas, F-sharp minor Variations, Symphonic Fantasy and Fugue), the organ sonatas of Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, as well as compositions by Liszt, Widor, Reubke – and the French Modern (M. Dupré, J. Alain, O. Messiaen). Andreas Köhs has already participated in various productions of hr and WDR during his studies.
Andreas Köhs is cantor and organist of the Protestant Lutheran community of Dreikönigsgemeinde in Frankfurt am Main. In this position, he successfully continues the highly regarded musical tradition established by Prof. Helmut Walcha and Prof. Kurt Thomas, extending far beyond the boundaries of the city of Frankfurt am Main. This includes his work as a concert organist as well as the artistic direction of the Kantorei Sachsenhausen, the Kurt-Thomas-Chamber Choir, the collegium vocale francfurt, and the Telemann Ensemble Frankfurt.
In addition to frequently themed organ concerts featuring works from all stylistic periods, regularly held at the grand Schuke organ of the Frankfurt Dreikönigskirche, under his direction, all major oratorios of the classical music literature have been performed in recent years. A cappella concerts with the Kurt-Thomas-Chamber Choir, one of the most powerful choirs in Frankfurt, feature literature by old masters (Schütz, Gabrieli, Bach, etc.) alongside significant choral works from the Romantic and Modern eras, such as double-choir masses by Martin, Rheinberger, Poulenc, Spohr, or Williams, Distler's Choral Passion, Penderecki's Agnus Dei, Howells' Requiem, and Fauré's Requiem. A special focus of his church music annual programs is the organization of cantata and music church services, which are highly popular in the Dreikönigsgemeinde.
Since its founding in 1994, Andreas Köhs has been a church music advisor, and since 2003, he has been chairman of the support association for church music of the Dreikönigsgemeinde "Kirchenmusik Dreikönig e. V." (www.kirchenmusik-dreikoenig.de).
Andreas Köhs was appointed "Titular Organist" by the Abbess of the Benedictine Abbey Kloster Engelthal in Altenstadt. Together with the Sisters' Schola, he recorded a CD of J. S. Bach's "Little Organ Book" in the abbey church.
Since 1997, Andreas Köhs has also worked as an author for Bärenreiter-Verlag Kassel.