Julia Hulsmann Quartet - A Clear Midnight (2015) [Official Digital Download 24-bit/96kHz]

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". Often his trumpet doubles or underpins Bleckmann’s singing, giving a new colour to the vocals.

This album’s subtitle, “Kurt Weill and America”, might seem to promise a set of Weill’s songs in jazz-cabaret style, but it’s much more complicated than that.Theo Bleckmann certainly sings the songs - Mack the Knife, September Song, Speak Low, etc – but the recastings by pianist Julia Hülsmann and her quartet make for an experience rather like reading a novel with an unreliable narrator. The familiar tunes and lyrics are set adrift in strange and alien surroundings. It takes some getting used to if you know the originals, but after a while I found it curiously compelling.

Tracklist:

01 - Mack the Knife
02 - Alabama Song
03 - Your Technique
04 - September Song
05 - This Is New
06 - River Chanty
07 - A Clear Midnight
08 - A Noisless Patient Spider
09 - Beat! Beat! Drums!
10 - Little Tin God
11 - Speak Low
12 - Great Big Sky

Produced by Manfred Eicher. Engineer: Jan Erik Kongshaug.
Recorded in June 2014 at Rainbow Studio, Oslo, Norway.

Musicians:
Julia Hülsmann - piano
Theo Bleckmann - vocals
Tom Arthurs - trumpet, flugelhorn
Marc Muellbauer - double bass
Heinrich Köbberling - drums


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