Andreas Köhs

is cantor and organist of the Evangelical Lutheran Community Union of the Three Kings Church (Dreikönigsgemeinde) in Frankfurt am Main.

In this position, he successfully continues the musical tradition established there by Professor Helmut Walcha and Professor Kurt Thomas, which is highly regarded far beyond the borders of Frankfurt am Main.

His diverse work as an organist and choirmaster includes working with large ensembles as well as chamber music and soloist formations, with which he performs at the Dreikönigskirche (Three Kings Church) in Frankfurt and throughout the Rhine-Main area, but also makes guest appearances in other locations, such as the Thomaskirche in Leipzig and Bach's places of work in Saxony and Thuringia.

He is the artistic director of the ensembles he founded in 1995, the Kurt Thomas Chamber Choir with vocally qualified singers and the Telemann Ensemble Frankfurt, consisting of professional instrumentalists, as well as other ensembles.

Under his direction, large oratorios, passions and mass settings are performed several times a year, particularly in Frankfurt's Dreikönigskirche, including the standard repertoire of Bach, Handel, Mozart, Haydn, Mendelssohn and Brahms, but also lesser-known compositions by Schelle, Knüpfer and Krieger, for example, which are considered rarities in Frankfurt's concert life.

Several times a year, he gives organ concerts featuring works from all stylistic periods on the large Schuke organ at the Dreikönigskirche. His wide-ranging repertoire includes the complete organ works of Bach and Buxtehude, all the major compositions of so-called North German organ music (Tunder, Bruhns, Lübeck) and significant organ works of the Romantic period – including the great chorale fantasies and free works by Reger and Mendelssohn, as well as compositions by Liszt, Widor and Reubke – and French modernism (Dupré, Alain, Messiaen).

In regular a cappella concerts with the Kurt Thomas Chamber Choir, demanding literature by old masters (Byrd, Weelkes, Tallis, Schütz, Monteverdi, Gabrieli, Palestrina, Hassler, Isaac, the Bach family, etc.) is performed alongside weighty, mostly double-choir choral works from the Romantic and Modern periods (Martin, Rheinberger, Poulenc, Distler, Spohr, Williams, Hauptmann, Schneider, Penderecki, etc.), as well as ambitious Mass settings and a cappella works by 20th- and 21st-century Northern European composers (Pärt, Miškinis, Ešenvalds, Nystedt, Vasks and Rautavaara).

A particular focus of his annual church music programmes is the performance of cantata services (cantatas by Bach, Buxtehude, Böhm, Bruhns, Erlebach, Krieger and others), which enjoy enduring popularity.

For many years, he has also been writing for the music publishers Bärenreiter Kassel and Breitkopf & Härtel Wiesbaden, as well as creating his own editions of scores based on library manuscripts by old masters.

Andreas Köhs first studied church music at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Frankfurt am Main. The A-level examination was followed by postgraduate studies in organ performance at the Cologne University of Music with Peter Neumann, where he passed the artistic maturity examination with distinction. After further studies in Professor Dorthy de Rooij's master organ class, he finally completed his concert examination at the Royal Conservatory in Maastricht.