A-TRANE PRÄSENTIERT:
JULIA HÜLSMANN QUARTET
«Under The Surface»
FEAT: Uli Kempendorff-Marc Muellbauer-Heinrich Köbberling
SPECIAL GUEST: Hildegunn Øiseth
ECM ALBUM RELEASE CONCERT

JULIA HÜLSMANN QUARTET
«Under The Surface»
FEAT: Uli Kempendorff-Marc Muellbauer-Heinrich Köbberling
SPECIAL GUEST: Hildegunn Øiseth
ECM ALBUM RELEASE CONCERT

Das Julia Hülsmann Quartet schafft eine musikalische Welt voller Intimität und Tiefgang. Die Berliner Pianistin ist seit über 30 Jahren bekannt für ihren lyrischen Stil. Durch ihre immerwährende subtile Suche nach unerforschten Soundebenen, ihren innovativen Stil und wie sie regelmäßig mit internationalen Gastmusikern zusammenarbeitet, hat sie sich als feste Größe in der deutschen Jazzszene etabliert. Dabei hält sie an ihrem eingespielten Quartett fest, mit Uli Kempendorff, Marc Muellbauer und Heinrich Köbberling. Sie präsentiert ihr neues Album “Under The Surface”, dass wieder auf dem legendären ECM-Label erschienen ist. Ein intimes Jazz-Erlebnis, das weit unter die Oberfläche geht.

This busy Berlin pianist and composer has become an integral part of the German jazz scene. For almost 30 years, she has been playing her compositions, often based on lyrical works, with the award-winning Julia Hülsmann Trio. She also welcomes international guests. Her album, Scattering Poems (2003, ACT Music), recorded with the Norwegian singer, Rebekka Bakken, stayed on the German jazz top-ten list for several weeks and received the German Jazz Prize in Gold. In the meantime, the musician has expanded her trio into the Julia Hülsman Quartet. Their debut album, Not Far from Here (2019, ECM Records), was honored with the German Jazz Prize in 2021. Their last quartet release, The Next Door, was also released on ECM, which stereoplay described as „a world of musical intimacy“ in October 2022, while Fono Forum called it „beautiful and almost out of this world“ in November of the same year.
For her new album, Under the Surface, which will again be released on ECM, Julia Hülsmann has brought a special guest into the studio in addition to her now established quartet: the Norwegian trumpeter and bukkehorn player, Hildegunn Øiseth, who recently added an exciting item to our record collection with her own Garden on the Roof. Hülsmann’s quartet, with Uli Kempendorff, Marc Muellbauer, and Heinrich Köbberling, is experimentally backed by Øiseth on five of the ten new pieces – which gives the already dazzling quadrupled sound a colorful fifth dimension, even where the quartet plays alone.
The opening Hülsmann composition, „They Stumble, They Walk,“ immediately draws you deep into its almost magical worlds: not only does the enchanting quality rise above a discreetly tense base – the will to go deeper, as indicated in the album title, can always be felt, until the constantly swelling whole pours into a stream that only trickles away into Kempendorff’s husky saxophone tone. The magical-sound-spreading intro of „May Song,“ on the other hand, leads into a silky slow jam that reminds us of times long past – elegantly, but not without a certain sense of tragedy, like a romance of which you can’t be quite sure, due to its insubstantiality (or brevity), wondering whether you haven’t just dreamt it or not.