My review of Julia Hülsmann Quartet W/ Theo Bleckmann's A Clear Midnight - Weill and America, today at All About Jazz.

Given enough time, things in life often come around full circle. Julia Hülsmann's three recordings for Munich's ACT label were all vocal affairs, where the German pianist's core trio—with bassist Marc Muellbauer and drummer Heinrich Köbberling—were joined by singers ranging from Norway's Rebekka Bakken to Germany's Roger Cicero. Since moving to another Munich label, the more heralded ECM Records, Hülsmann has demonstrated a more careful approach to expanding and evolving her work. Her first two recordings for the label—2008's The End of a Summer and 2011 followup, Imprint—pared things back to her core trio as if to signal a new beginning, adopting a wholly acoustic approach. Rather than returning to singers, Hülsmann expanded her 14 year-old trio to a quartet on 2013's In Full View by recruiting British trumpeter Tom Arthurs—a terrific choice that facilitated the pianist's ongoing migration towards a more evenly balanced blend of elegant lyricism with a more outgoing approach.

But, clearly, Hülsmann has enjoyed working with singers and, perhaps just as importantly, with songs. And so, for her fifth ECM date (including a 2009 collaboration with guitarist Marc Sinan, Fasil), Hülsmann has paired her quartet with Theo Bleckmann, a German singer who, since relocating to New York City in 1989 and collaborating with the likes of über-guitarist Ben Monder and drummer/composer John Hollenbeck, has garnered a reputation for fearless improvisational élan that often includes the use of electronics and a penchant for unpredictable musical choices for jazz interpretation, like his Hello Earth! (Winter & Winter, 2012) project which, brought to the 2011 edition of Heidelberg, Germany's Enjoy Jazz festival, took the music of Kate Bush into territory even the intrepid British prog-pop goddess could never have envisaged.

If A Clear Midnight - Kurt Weill and America largely dispenses with Bleckmann's electronics and, on paper at least, draws from a songbook that's long held a more direct tie to the jazz world, one listen to what may be Weill's best-known song, "Mack the Knife," makes clear that this is not going to be a conventional set of readings.

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