While I Was Away Julia Hülsmann Octet

• 1 Coisário De Imagens 05:56
• 2 Sleep 05:06
• 3 Up, Up, Up, Up, Up, Up 04:58
• 4 Felicia's Song 04:19
• 5 You Come Back 03:51
• 6 Walkside 04:55
• 7 Hora Azul 04:02
• 8 TicToc 04:56
• 9 Iskele 04:37
• 10 Moonfish Dance 05:07
• Total Runtime 47:47

Info for While I Was Away

After the acclaimed run of quartet recordings from Not Far From Here (2019), The Next Door (2022) to Under The Surface (2025), German pianist Julia Hülsmann has decided to alter the narrative and up the ante with a newly formed octet of instrumentalists and vocalists. On While I Was Away Julia combines the line-up of a classical trio (violin, cello, piano) with a common jazz piano trio and invites three singers to join in for a programme of adventurous originals, an individual take on Ani DiFranco’s 1999 hit “Up Up…” and a breezy Brazilian tune by songwriters Zélia Fonsesca and Rosanna Tavares. The music is often combined with lyrics of renown writers, for instance Emily Dickinson, Margaret Artwood and E.E. Cummings. A wide pallet of musical connotations unfolds, as Brazilian dance, musical-like storytelling, chamber music dynamics and passages of dense, free improvisation colour a fluorescent picture of a fierce ensemble. The musicians of Julia’s octet are: Eva Klesse, Eva Kruse, Susanne Paul, Héloïse Lefebvre, Michael Schiefel, Aline Frazão and Live Maria Roggen.

“Coisário De Imagens”, opening the album, was written by the songwriter-team of Rosanna & Zélia who “were very important to me in the 90s,” Julia emphasizes. “Their albums were formative for me and my peers.” On the tune, Angolian singer Aline Frazão takes the lead, delivering a powerful performance propelled by a swift Baião rhythm in the band’s foundation. Aline is also at the helm for Julia’s own “Hora Azul”, to which the singer contributed the lyrics. “From the beginning,” says Julia, “one of the central ideas of the project was to have everyone contribute their own character to the mix, and we have different cultural backgrounds that add much variety in this process. Aline Frazão for instance has a very natural approach to songwriting in Portuguese. I was very moved by her adding her own lyrics to my piece.”

Norwegian singer Live Maria Roggen adds her own Skandinavian background to the widely flung net of musical idioms. Her contributions “Felicia’s Song” and “Moonfish Dance” spin intriguing narratives around a highly interactive band sound, with the violin and cello spinning pirouettes around Julia’s equally responsive keyboard work. Live, wo was originally recommended to Julia by Anja Garbarek, also wrote the lyrics for Julia’s “Walkside”, a composition pulled from her quartet repertory. “I love how this piece now bridges my quartet sound world with that of the octet.”

The three voices on the record are each equipped with distinct characteristics, connecting harmoniously in several instances across the record. On “Tic Toc” during the rhythmically dancing chorus – more a spoken word unison than a hymnal refrain –, before dispersing into different harmonies, while “You Come Back” increases the drama with the two female vocalists flexing their harmonies around Michael Schiefel’s intense, music theatre-like narration. Schiefel is one of Julia’s longest friends (they met in 1991 as students) and his rapport with her music is accordingly natural. His original “Iskele” is a dreamy ballad that conjures the nighttime with “shooting stars” before his singer colleagues enter for the coda.

On Julia’s composition “Sleep”, Aline sings excerpts from the Emily Dickinson poem “Sleep Is Supposed To Be”, words that juxtapose expectations of sleep and morning. Eva Kruse’s double bass solo brings a soothing pause into the song, with the instrumental section taking over and Julia sprinkling evocative lines into the spontaneous ensemble interplay. On “Up, Up…”, with Schiefel on lead vocals, instrumental passages grow out of the song-form seamlessly, giving drummer Eva Klesse, bassist Kruse, the strings and Julia space to unfold in brief improvisation.

Julia and her octet will be presenting music off While I Was Away at concerts in Germany and Switzerland in March 2026.

"Hülsmann’s compositions always have great respect for melody that lends depth and an enduring quality to her finest work, which with every addition to her ECM discography, keeps growing." (Jazzwise)

Aline Frazão, vocals
Live Maria Roggen, vocals
Michael Schiefel, vocals
Héloïse Lefebvre, violin
Susanne Paul, violoncello
Julia Hülsmann, piano
Eva Kruse, double bass
Eva Klesse, drums

Recorded September 2023 at Hansa Studio, Berlin
Engineered by Nanni Johansson

Julia Hülsmann
was born in Bonn in 1968. She took classical piano lessons from the age of eleven and started her first band at 16. In 1991, she moved to Berlin to study jazz piano at the University of the Arts (HdK) and the following year joined the German Youth Jazz Orchestra (BuJazzO). Since 1997, Hülsmann has worked with her own trio, playing at clubs and festivals all over Germany.

Julia Hülsmann’s ECM debut The End of a Summer came in 2008, with regular partners Marc Muellbauer (bass) and Heinrich Köbberling (drums), followed by Imprint, in 2011. In 2012, the trio became a quartet with the addition of English trumpet and flugelhorn player Tom Arthurs, a line-up which released In Full View, in 2013. Arthurs brought a strong new frontline voice that not only inspired Julia Hülsmann as player and arranger, but also had a stimulating effect on the composing activities within the quartet.

Singer Theo Bleckmann added his considerable vocal gifts to the quartet on A Clear Midnight: Kurt Weill and America (2015), an imaginative response to the composer’s songs that had its origins in the 2013 Kurt Weill Festival in Dessau. John Fordham wrote in the Guardian: “This might just be one of the great jazz treatments of the songs of Kurt Weill […] Not a sound is out of place on this beautifully crafted project.”

Booklet for While I Was Away