Erwin Lehn
Erwin Lehn ( born June 8, 1919 in Green City, Pfalz, † March 20, 2010 in Stuttgart ) was a German musician and orchestra leader.
Life
Lehn visited the municipal school of music in Peine and received violin, piano and clarinet lessons, but not completed music studies. His musical career began in 1945 as a pianist and arranger in the directed by Michael Jary Berlin Radio Dance Orchestra, which he led from 1947 to 1951, along with Horst Kudritzki. Here also first recordings emerged, among others, Helmut Zacharias and Walter Dobschinski.
On April 1, 1951, he founded the Südfunk Dance Orchestra of the South German Radio (SDR ) in Stuttgart, which he directed until 1992. It developed within a short time of one radio band to a modern swinging big band: Erwin Lehn and his Südfunk dance orchestra. In addition to the band by Kurt Edelhagen Südwestfunk the Südfunk dance orchestra in the years to become one of the leading Swing big bands in the Federal Republic of Germany. Numerous guest appearances legendary jazz musicians of the 1950s and 1960s testify to the recognition that enjoyed the orchestra leader in the professional world. Some of its members later formed his own orchestra, including Horst Jankowski, Peter Herbolzheimer, Klaus Weiss and Ernst Mosch.
With Dieter Zimmerle and tungsten Roehrig Lehn founded in 1955 for the SDR the consignment meeting jazz. There Lehn played with international jazz greats like Miles Davis, Benny Goodman, Stan Getz, Lester Young, Chick Corea or Chet Baker.
However, Lehn had no fear of contact good entertainment music outside of jazz. This proves the cooperation with many sizes of this genre as Alice Babs, Josephine Baker, Bibi Johns, Greetje purchase field, Angelina Monti, Marika Rokk, Anneliese Rothenberger, Caterina Valente, Peter Alexander, Bully Buhlan, Udo Jürgens and Bill Ramsey. He composed and wrote the lyrics for many hit and wrote the music for more than 50 feature films. Together with Paul Kuhn and Max Greger he played numerous concert tours. With its Südfunktanzorchester he was also responsible for the musical framework in numerous entertainment programs by Hans Rosenthal ( " Alone against all ", " fun has to be," " Ask me anything " ) in the transmission area of the South German Radio responsible.
In 1992, Lehn from the director of the orchestra, which occurs since then with various conductors and in 1998 renamed band as part of the merger between SWF and SDR in SWR Big.
In 1976, Lehn directing the big band at the Stuttgart Musikhochschule, where in 1985 he was also appointed Honorary Professor, and gained thereby great contributions in the promotion of young musicians. For this he was awarded the Federal Cross of Merit. In 1997 he handed over the management of the band to Bernd Konrad.
Erwin Lehn was honored in 2001 for his lifetime achievement with the German Jazz Trophy. He was a self-confessed fan of Stuttgarter Kickers for their club song he wrote the music.