JULIA HÜLSMANN

JULIA HÜLSMANN QUARTET 

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, Hildegund Øiseth, who recently added an exciting item to our record collection with her own Garden on the Roof. Hülsmann's quartet, with Uli Kempendorff on tenor saxophone, Marc Muellbauer on bass, and Heinrich Köbberling on drums, 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.

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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.

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The slight, dissonant frictions of Muellbauer's "Second Thoughts" are also tangled up within dream-veiled atmospheres – and the two wind players graze against each other in the unison passages of "Bubbles," – just enough, but not too much. The beauty of the gentle dissonance is counteracted here, not to mention intercepted and contained by Hülsmann's lavish playing, which feels like a wide embrace into which the other players can confidently let themselves fall. So well looked after, the grand – and unique to this record – appearance of the goat horn unfolds its uplifting, pulling effect, which instantly beams us into another cosmos.

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The swinging "Nevergreen," which compels you to move your body and groove along, provides the reality check, while the ballad-like, and even elegiac, but never pathetic, "The Earth Below," blooms magnificently, even in its most minimalist passages. Øiseth's smoky trumpet tone, which makes you feel instantly happy, is further enhanced here by the heart-opening melody. Too much harmony? The gripping "Anti Fragile" balances this out with its pointed rhythm and melody phrases that border on hard bop. "Trick," on the other hand, not only picks up speed, but also, above all, builds suspense. Scenes of wild chases come to mind, borrowed from a film noir scene with elegant hoodlums from the 1920s who move to the gangster's groove in the ballroom just as casually as they draw their guns – and despite all the tension that their situation commands at that moment, still stroll effortlessly and stylishly through their settings in three-piece suits, two-toned shoes, and Borsalino fedoras.

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"Milkweed Monarch" is another magical number that really draws you in. How blissfully you can imagine yourself in the intimate live experience, equipped with every jazz fan's favorite provisions: a dark room and a good drink. And of course, all while feverishly listening to how the bass almost wants to gallop away and take the saxophone with it as an accomplice, although it would much prefer to fly off the keys in order to be able to flirt better with the free jazz, until the grand piano also lets itself be infected by the spirit of optimism.

The titular closer approaches, quietly dripping, only to become intoxicated again by this soothing friction, which one has learned to recognize over the course of this record as a certain but indefinable je ne sais quoi. This elusive magical quality catapults you a tiny bit beyond your comfort zone, to which you can never return afterwards without getting a little bored. It's like being introduced to new culinary delights that surpass the ones you're accustomed to: once you’ve acquired a taste for them, you can't go back to what you’ve made do with up till then. In this sense, the Julia Hülsmann Quartet with Hildegund Øiseth acts as a kind of subtle flavor enhancer – completely unpretentious, under the radar, under the surface.