Julia Hülsmann Quartet

Not Far From Here introduces the new quartet of the German pianist and composer Julia Hülsmann. Her trio with bassist Marc Muellbauer and drummer Heinrich Köbberling, together for 17 years at the time, is joined by the Berlin tenor saxophonist Uli Kempendorff. Each member brought compositions, and the set includes two readings of This Is Not America, the song by David Bowie, Pat Metheny and Lyle Mays.

Hülsmann had worked in a quartet before: on In Full View (2013) the fourth voice was the trumpeter Tom Arthurs. Kempendorff changes the colour of the group, bringing a tenor that moves between lyricism and harder, freer playing. Hülsmann wrote five of the thirteen pieces, Muellbauer and Köbberling two each, Kempendorff two. The album was recorded in March 2019 at Studios La Buissonne in Pernes-les-Fontaines, with Gérard de Haro as engineer and Thomas Herr producing. Its release coincided with a European tour that included ECM50 concerts at the London Jazz Festival and at Flagey in Brussels.

The opener, The Art Of Failing, is a short duo for piano and tenor in which Kempendorff stays restrained. Muellbauer's Le Mistral, the longest piece at almost eight minutes, follows a zigzagging bass line, and his Wrong Song starts from noir-like harmony before turning into a saxophone storm. The quartet version of This Is Not America goes from stealthy understatement to split-note wailing on the tenor. The closing variation is a solo for Hülsmann, a plaintive set of harmonic shifts over a repeated note. Kempendorff's own Einschub sets up a melodic and rhythmic dialogue for all four. Elsewhere there are tender ballads such as Köbberling's If I Had A Heart and drum patterns that slip into swing.

John Fordham in The Guardian called the album "a standout" and heard links to the 1950s Cool School and the mid-60s Miles Davis quintet. He described it as "clever, thoughtful, inquisitively contemporary jazzmaking, right in the ECM ballpark". In Jazz Journal, Simon Adams located the record's interest in the tension between a cool trio and the freedom given to the saxophone. Other critics, in DownBeat and Bebop Spoken Here, also singled out Kempendorff's tone.

This is the CD edition, ECM 2664, first released on 1 November 2019.