Dr. Joachim Junghanss, DMA
Deputy Director, Conservatorium van Amsterdam.
As Deputy Director, a member of the Executive Board leading strategy, finance, and organizational development for one of Europe's leading music conservatories.
Profile
Joachim holds a doctoral degree from the Manhattan School of Music and began as a pianist and composer before moving into strategy consulting at BCG.
He later moved into international higher education leadership across Europe and Asia, and today serves as Deputy Director of the Conservatorium van Amsterdam.
There he holds institute-wide responsibility across eleven programmes, and has built new interdisciplinary master’s programmes, young-talent pathways, and programmes in distance learning, popular and electronic music. As a queer leader, he stands for openness, freedom of expression and equal opportunity in the arts.
Musical Background
Before moving into higher education leadership, Joachim trained and worked as a pianist, composer and educator. His musical formation is classical — a rigorous performance training in Munich and a Meisterschüler in Leipzig — which he bridged to jazz as he continued his career in New York, earning a Doctor of Musical Arts from the Manhattan School of Music. He performed at venues including Weill Recital Hall, Carnegie Hall and the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and worked as a répétiteur with opera singers in New York.
For him, classical interpretation and jazz improvisation have always been one musical language — extending naturally into improvisation and electro-acoustic performance. He also taught at the Manhattan School of Music, drawing on years of experience as a private studio teacher and pedagogue.
His artistic background continues to inform his approach to leadership in higher music education — a firsthand understanding of what institutions like the Conservatorium van Amsterdam exist to serve.
