Sooner and Later marks the return of the Berlin pianist Julia Hülsmann to the trio she shares with bassist Marc Muellbauer and drummer Heinrich Köbberling, after a quartet and a quintet album. It is her sixth album for ECM, and it grew out of long tours that took the three musicians to the United States, Canada, Peru, Central Asia and China. In Hülsmann's words, "something special developed" on the road and opened new sonic territory for the group.
The same trio had made The End of a Summer (2008) and Imprint (2011) for the label. In between came the quartet record In Full View (2013) and A Clear Midnight (2015), a Kurt Weill programme with the singer Theo Bleckmann. Sooner and Later was recorded in September 2016 at Rainbow Studio in Oslo, with Jan Erik Kongshaug as engineer and Manfred Eicher as producer. All three members contribute compositions, Hülsmann five, Muellbauer and Köbberling two each.
Two pieces come from outside the group. Biz Joluktuk is a tune the band heard from a twelve-year-old violinist in Kyrgyzstan, later reharmonised by Hülsmann, and it sits next to a version of Radiohead's All I Need. Thatpujai is an anagram of Jutta Hipp, and its theme is assembled from phrases in the solos of the German pianist. The opener, From Afar, sets the tone with short piano motifs, an answering bass and slowly gathering harmony. Hülsmann's J.J., Soon and Der Mond lean on the trio's rhythmic side, at times with almost club-like grooves.
Writing in The Guardian, John Fordham noted that the band "consistently speak with one voice" and called the album "a quietly classy and vivacious set". He also heard in All I Need an awareness of Brad Mehldau's treatment of the same song. For All About Jazz, Karl Ackermann found an album that grows with repeated listening, where interplay takes precedence over solo space without hiding the individual players. Tyran Grillo of ECM Reviews heard travel and movement as its unifying theme, from the opening track to the bass line of Muellbauer's The Poet (for Ali).
This is the CD edition, ECM 2547, released on 24 February 2017.
