Julia Hulsmann Trio, Sooner And Later

Here we are with pianist Julia Hulsmann and her sixth ECM album to date, the trio in a stunning offering Sooner and Later (ECM 2547). You'd be hard pressed today to find a more beautiful piano trio set for the harmonic-melodic advancement of Julia's playing (in a post-Evans manner and very individually so) and her trio's very subtle and moving togetherness.

The regular trio appears here, now burnished down to a very fine three-way sonance. Marc Muellbauer has a beautiful tone on contrabass and a very eloquent approach to match. Heinrich Kobberling drums with drive and subtlety, in ways the trio profits greatly from but in the end requires for a full flowering.

The music played on this set includes many moving Hulsmann originals which have gotten the seasoning of being played for some time in the trio's live performances. One welcomes "Thatpujai," a tribute to the late pianist Jutta Hipp, who left our planet in 2003. The thematic materials are nicely culled from some of Jutta's recorded solos. But there is much to appreciate here with all five Hulsmann pieces. Then there are two tunes apiece by Muellbauer and Kobberling, interesting and worthy, plus an adaptation of a Kyrgyztanian violin piece played by a 12-year-old musican the band heard when on tour, and finally a Radiohead cover, unexpected but fully consistent with what the trio is doing today and their way of working inside harmonic-melodic material transformatively.

In the end this is a delicately ravishing album that marks the excellence of the pianist and her trio.

This is exultant listening, ecstatic music of calm and fire from some of Europe's most talented musicians and a pianist of world-class brilliance. Hear this!