Since he was discovered by Richie Beirach and brought to New York in the early 1990s, Tim Sund has released 14 albums under his own name, which clearly document Sund's homogeneous musical development.
Sund's musical career began at the age of six and he began playing the piano when he was eight. Initially learning purely classically, he discovered jazz at the age of 15. Soon he was taking part in master classes and workshops with well-known pianists such as Joanne Brackeen, Walter Norris, Bob Degen and Richie Beirach and in 1988 he won first prize at Jugend Jazzt NRW.
When Richie Beirach invited him to study privately in New York in 1993, Sund was already studying at the Musikhochschule in Cologne, had been a sideman with the American saxophonist Ernie Watts and had meanwhile recorded his debut album About Time. While studying with Beirach he released his second CD Borderlands - a duo with saxophonist Claudius Valk - which was produced by Beirach.
After graduating in Cologne in 1995, he studied classical composition with Ludmila Ulehla at the Manhattan School of Music in New York. Meanwhile, Sund immersed himself in the colorful new music scene in New York, composed, among other things, the piano concerto Towards the Lotus Shrine. But he didn't completely turn his back on jazz during this time either: the weekly sessions in the apartment of a German doctor and jazz freak in Spanish Harlem, which were often supposed to last all night, became a test laboratory for a group of musicians, from which ultimately also Sund's new ensemble, the Tim Sund Quintet, was formed, composed of Joel Frahm (saxophones), Gregor Huebner (violin), Mark P. Brown (bass) and Andreas Griefingholt (drums).
Before his return from New York, Sund recorded the album ...In the Midst of Change with this formation in the summer of 1997, which also brought him greater attention in Germany. David Liebman wrote in the CD's liner notes: "With first class musicians who play together in an almost seamless interactive manner and the great writing, the listener is subject to a feast of moods, passion and feeling."
Since autumn 1997 in Berlin, Tim Sund had been touring regularly with his quintet. In 1999 the Portuguese Carlos Bica took over the bassist role. The second quintet CD The Rains from a Cloud do not wet the Sky was released in 2000.
In the meantime (1999-2001) Sund wrote a comprehensive work for large orchestra and jazz quintet commissioned by the Senate of the City of Berlin (Time/Window/Memory).
In 1999 the highly acclaimed CD Erika Rojo & Tim Sund - Das Lied was released, on which songs by Schubert, Schumann, Manuel de Falla and Vaughan Williams, enriched with more than just a pinch of jazz, appear in a new light.
The trio album Trialogue was released in 2002, on which Sund works together with Martin Lillich (bass) and Michael Kersting (drums). In the spring of 2002, Sund was in the studio again with drummer Michael Kersting and the Americans Tom Christensen (saxophones, English horn, alto flute) and Ben Allison (bass) in New York and recorded the album Americana. The quartet then gave guest performances at both the Fieldston Jazz Festival and the Cornelia Street Café in New York.
In 2004 the quartet was reformed into a kind of classical chamber ensemble: Christensen (oboe, English horn, alto flute & bass clarinet), Sund (piano), Tomas Ulrich (cello) and Michael Kersting (percussion). Sund and Christensen composed a completely new program of exciting music at the borders of classical and jazz, which was then also recorded for RBB (Radio Berlin Brandenburg).
In the fall of 2006, Sund and Christensen recorded this music again in a trio with Tomas Ulrich in New York, resulting in the album Kailash. The trio toured Germany in autumn 2007 and made guest appearances at the Festspielhaus Hellerau as part of the Dresden Days of Contemporary Music.
In 2004 Sund also began to focus on solo piano and in 2005 recorded his solo album As Dark As The Sun, which was released by Nabel accompanied by a sheet music volume containing all the music from the CD.
At the invitation of the German Embassy and the Goethe Institute, Sund performed his solo program at the EuroJazzFestival in Mexico City in 2006, followed by a concert tour across the country. When he was invited again in 2007, this time to open the EuroJazzFestival, he took the great Berlin jazz singer Daniel Mattar with him on the trip, the duo album A Mexican Story in his hand luggage.
In 2008 Sund came up with the idea of a longer term band project to incorporate his early rock influences and the use of electronics and keyboards. In 2009 the time had come: he founded his new band THE MIGHTIEST EVER with Valentin Gregor (vln), Christian Kappe (tp), Guilherme Castro (b) and Kai Schönburg (dr). The band recorded their album NOW for ESC Records in autumn 2011.
Over time, Sund's desire to give the rock aspect of his music more room, preferably with singing and lyrics, grew. In autumn 2015 he founded the progressive rock band Green Desert Tree together with Timo Enders (vocals), Simon Rainer (g), Alex Will (b) and Jonathan Gradmann (dr). The band worked consistently for a year on the songs for the debut album, which was then recorded in October 2016. Afterwards GDT also began to play concerts.
The album Progressive Worlds was released in spring 2019 and was released as a double album on 180g vinyl.
In addition, Sund's album Butterfly Effect - A Tribute to Herbie Hancock's Mwandishi was released in spring 2019 with many Berlin colleagues and some international guests, which was produced and recorded by RBB in summer 2017.
During this time, a very close cooperation and friendship developed with Stephan Schmitt, the founder of Native Instruments, who in the meantime had founded his new company Nonlinear Labs, with which he had just released his first hardware synthesizer, the C15.
Sund began using the C15 live and in the studio as well as recording video demos for NLL.
Alex Will and Jonathan Gradmann were no longer part of GDT. However, Sund had always kept in touch with both of them and in early 2020 the trio started meeting up and playing on an occasional basis. And it didn't take long before the idea of filming these meetings came up - this is how the video series "TIM SUND electrified" came about.
In October, the trio went to the studio and played the album "The Future on our Doorstep", which was released in January 2023 on the new label Signal Source Music, which Sund and Schmitt founded together with Ernst Pelzer in 2021.
After Tim Sund had built up and managed the Studienvorbereitung Jazz/Pop at the Berlin Musikschule City West for many years, he joined the Nonlinear Labs team in the Spring 2022.
