A Clear Midnight - Kurt Weill and America Julia Hülsmann Quartet & Theo Bleckmann

• 1 Mack the Knife 04:31
• 2 Alabama Song 04:07
• 3 Your Technique 04:53
• 4 September Song 06:50
• 5 This Is New 05:32
• 6 River Chanty 04:49
• 7 A Clear Midnight 05:47
• 8 A Noisless Patient Spider 07:03
• 9 Beat! Beat! Drums! 04:19
• 10 Little Tin God 06:38
• 11 Speak Low 08:51
• 12 Great Big Sky 04:46
• Total Runtime 01:08:06

Info for A Clear Midnight - Kurt Weill and America

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. As for Theo Bleckmann, this is the sensitive vocalist’s first ECM appearance as a jazz singer, although he has recorded twice for the label as a member of the Meredith Monk ensemble on “Mercy” and “Impermanence”.

Pianist Julia Hülsmann and singer Theo Bleckmann, in a first 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. Bassist Marc Muellbauer brings his arranging skills to the fore on “Your Technique”, “September Song”, “This Is New” and “River Chanty”.

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, sometimes surrounding the vocals with a halo of sound. Bleckmann’s intimate delivery, Hülsmann’s sense for the bare-boned ballad, and the discreet arrangements put a well-deserved focus on the lyrics, including the very fine song texts of Langston Hughes, Ogden Nash, Maxwell Anderson, Ira Gershwin and Ann Ronnell – as well as Marc Blitzstein’s brilliantly-vivid adaptation of Brecht, which gave “Mack The Knife” immortality. “The emphasis on slow tempos was made almost intuitively,” says Hülsmann. “These wonderful lyrics seem to me to demand that you give them space – and give the listener time to really follow the words”.

Over the years the music of Weill has been interpreted in countless ways but the jazz band remains an especially apt context. Weill, the German-born composer who became a US citizen - and one of the most passionate advocates of American constitutional values - hailed jazz enthusiastically as “the rhythm of our time” and called it “an international folk music of the broadest consequence.” In the Hülsmann group and singer Bleckmann he has German interpreters who share his perspectives on the all-embracing potential of the music, and find in it the freedom to be themselves. This includes, in one instance, the freedom to pass over Weill’s melody in favour of Julia’s own, for a setting of Walt Whitman’s “Beat! Beat! Drums!”. Julia furthermore sets Whitman’s meditational text “A Clear Midnight” (“This is the hour O soul … Away from books, away from art, the day erased, the lesson done”) and brings music to “A Noiseless Patient Spider”, another beautifully-observed Whitman poem.

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

Julia Hülsmann (born in 1968 in Bonn) began playing piano at the age of 11. She formed her first band at the age of 16. In 1991 she moved to Berlin, and played in the Bundesjugendjazzorchestra under the direction of Peter Herbolzheimer. Recordings under her name have included collaborations with Roger Cicero, Rebekka Bakken, and Anna Lauvergnac.

Trumpeter, flugelhornist and composer Tom Arthurs (born 1980) studied with Dave Douglas, Joe Lovano and Jim Black at Banff Centre for the Arts (Canada). His work situates itself between large scale commissions for orchestra and beyond, chamber jazz, and highly experimental improvised music. He has performed with (amongst others) John Surman, John Taylor, Tom Rainey, Drew Gress, Ingrid Laubrock, Jack DeJohnette, Iain Ballamy, Thomas Strønen, Nicolas Masson, Kenny Wheeler and electronic music manipulators Icarus. Recent recordings include albums by Eric Schaefer, Miles Perkin Quartet, H3B and with Richard Fairhurst.

Bassist Marc Muellbauer (born in London in 1968) also leads his own nine-piece band, Kaleidoscope. He has a wide musical background ranging from contemporary classical to tango, as well as jazz with diverse formations. Currently he is also a member of the Lisbeth Quartett. Muellbauer teaches double-bass at the Jazzinstitut Berlin.

Drummer Heinrich Köbberling (born in Bad Arolsen/Hessen in 1967) has worked with Aki Takase, Ernie Watts, Anat Fort, Richie Beirach and many others: he has played on around 50 jazz albums. A 1997 leader date, “Pisces” included Marc Johnson and Ben Monder as sidemen. Köbberling teaches drums at the FMB Conservatory in Leipzig.

Booklet for A Clear Midnight - Kurt Weill and America