Julia.2008

Since they started in the early 1970’s, ECM has been giving the world one excellent jazz piano disc after another–significant names include Keith Jarrett, Chick Corea, and Paul Bley, more recently Anat Fort, Bo Stenson, and now Julia Hulsmann. Leading a trio on her ECM debut, THE END OF SUMMER, Hulsman displays a graceful, muted, and melancholy air. In the manner of Stenson and Bley, Hulsmann expresses maximum emotion and mood using the fewest (but well-placed) notes. Unlike the aforementioned gentlemen however, Hulsmann favors almost folk-like, affable, and concise melodies. Her bassist and drummer seem subdued at times, but they’re constantly lending the tunes a sense of forward motion.

Julia Bradbury has her backpack on to explore the great outdoors. Julia's walks follow the old tracks, overgrown cuttings and ancient viaducts of Britain's lost rail empire, visiting disused lines across England, Scotland and Wales. Through stunning landscapes and urban backstreets, each contrasting walk has a unique story to tell, offering Julia a window into industrial Britain and how the rise and fall of the railways has altered lives and localities across the country.

When the composer Sergey Akhunov discovered the ground-breaking book of 1947, “Jazz”, by Henri Matisse – a collection of prints of his colourful cut-paper collages – he was struck by its almost surreal nature, and he conceived the idea of composing music with the title “Jazz”, but which, like Matisse’s book, has nothing to do with jazz. That inspiration finally took shape when Julia Igonina and Maxim Emelyanychev commissioned him to compose a work for them. The result was Jazz, a cycle for violin and piano: fifteen miniatures, bearing titles taken from the prints in Matisse’s book. On this new recording, those pieces are brought together with two French masterpieces of the 1940s by Messiaen and Poulenc (whose favourite painter was Matisse), performed by Julia Igonina and Maxim Emelyanychev on period instruments – violin with gut strings and a magnificent 1908 Blüthner piano (part of the collection of the Piano Museum in Rybinsk).