Artist.......: Julia Hulsmann Trio with Roger Cicero
Album........: Good Morning Midnight
Label........: ACT Music
Genre........: Jazz
Catnr........: ACT 9709-2
source.......: CDDA
rip.date.....: Jun-21-2007
str.date.....: Jan-27-2006
quality......: VBR/44,1Hz/Joint-Stereo
Url..........: www.juliahuelsmann.de
track title time
01. I Cannot See 06:16
02. Will There Really Be A Morning 07:15
03. Good Morning Midnight 05:56
04. My River 02:51
05. When Plato Was A Certainty 06:31
06. Light 04:22
07. One Sister 05:58
08. Tell Her 05:13
09. Riverman 06:01
10. Under The Light 06:10
11. I Don't Know His Name 04:36
Runtime 61:09 min
Size 74,8 MB
Release Notes:
Emily Dickinson isn't the first name to spring to
mind when you're thinking poetry and jazz. Rural
(she lived in Amherst, Massachusetts all her life),
introspective, and of strict Calvinist upbringing,
Dickinson and jazz sound about as likely as Baz
Lurman and a biopic about St Francis of Assissi.
But the unlikeliest of bedfellows sometimes make
the sweetest music, and Julia Hulsmann's Good
Morning Midnight is such a union: soulful, sinewy
piano trio jazz, set around ten Dickinson poems
plus one song (Riverman) from the late English
singer/songwriter and Twentieth Century romantic,
Nick Drake. Imagine the Esbjorn Svensson Trio with
Kurt Elling re-setting the works of William
Wordsworth and you're approaching the right
ballpark.
Hulsmann has worked with poetry before. Her '03 ACT
debut, Scattering Poems, was set to the work of ee
cummings, and the more recent Come Closer was an
homage to Randy Newman. On both those albums,
Hulsmann worked with female singers. For the
Dickinson project, she's chosen a man....
And the secret weapon here is undoubtedly Roger
Cicero. His schooled, technically facile voice
lends itself well to Dickinson's precise and formal
verseùbut the soul/gospel undertones behind the
college veneer provide the real spark. On Will
There Really Be A Morning, Good Morning Midnight,
When Plato Was A Certainty and Under The Light in
particular, it's like you're listening to Stevie
Wonder. Consciously or unconsciously, Cicero has
adopted the signature textures and inflexions of
Wonder's voice, notably the dreamy vibrato, the
gospel-infused husky cry, the elides up to and down
from, and the embellishments of, root notes. At
times you could swear you were listening to
Innervisions or Talking Book. It's uncanny, not in
the slightest Dickinsonianùand delightful.
Hulsmann herself is a distinctive composer and
improviser. She creates long, long, lyrical lines,
whether written or spontaneous, which stretch over
six, eight or ten bars before moving on; she can
get down and funky, or up and cerebral; and she
always swings. In longstanding partners Heinrich
Kobberling and Marc Muellbauer, Hulsmann is blessed
with an imaginative and agile drum and bass team,
with Muellbauer additionally a fine arranger. (He
scored the expanded lineup featured on Will There
Really Be A Morning and Riverman.)
It all adds up to an unlikely and unexpected
pleasure