Julia Hulsmann Quartet In Full View

After two acclaimed trio albums pianist Julia Hülsmann proposes a different project for her third ECM release “In Full View”, motivated initially by a performance by Berlin-based, English trumpet player Tom Arthurs: “I found the music so beautiful that I asked him on the spot to collaborate…” After first rehearsals had established musical compatibility, Hülsmann called upon the services of her trusted rhythm section of Marc Muellbauer (double bass) and Heinrich Köbberling, but a vocalist was no longer needed. Thus the Julia Hülmann Trio became the Julia Hülsmann Quartet – with a prominent role for Tom Arthurs as strong new frontline voice that not only inspires Julia Hülsmann as player and arranger, but also had a stimulating effect on the composing activities within the quartet, with all members bringing compositions to the table.

Pianist Julia Hülsmann and singer Theo Bleckmann, in a first – and long-awaited – collaborative recording, celebrate the “unsung Weill” alongside the master’s best-loved works including “Mack The Knife”, “Speak Low” and “September Song”, adding also Julia’s settings of Walt Whitman, with whom Kurt Weill felt an affinity. The project came together at the instigation of the Kurt Weill Festival in Dessau in 2013 and since then has gained new life on the road and been fine-tuned in this studio recording made in Oslo in June 2014 with Manfred Eicher as producer. It marks a musical advance for the Hülsmann group at a number of levels, and these recastings of Weill open up new imaginative possibilities for the players. English trumpeter and flugelhornist Tom Arthurs, who made his debut with Hülsmann on In Full View is fully integrated on A Clear Midnight.