After an acclaimed run of quartet recordings—from Not Far From Here (2019) through The Next Door (2022) to Under The Surface (2025)—German pianist Julia Hülsmann shifts perspective and scale with While I Was Away, a striking new project for octet. Expanding her long-standing trio-based language, Hülsmann brings together a classical core of piano, violin, and cello with a jazz rhythm section and three highly distinctive vocalists. The result is music that feels at once intimate and expansive, carefully composed yet fearlessly open.
The album blends Hülsmann originals with a personal reimagining of Ani DiFranco’s “Up Up…” and a buoyant Brazilian song by Rosanna Tavares and Zélia Fonseca, while drawing lyrical inspiration from writers such as Emily Dickinson, Margaret Atwood, and E.E. Cummings. Brazilian dance rhythms, chamber-music transparency, musical-theatre storytelling, and passages of dense free improvisation coexist naturally, forming a vivid, constantly shifting sound world. Hülsmann’s octet—Eva Klesse, Eva Kruse, Susanne Paul, Héloïse Lefebvre, Michael Schiefel, Aline Frazão, and Live Maria Roggen—functions as a true ensemble, fierce in commitment and rich in color.
The album opens with “Coisário De Imagens,” written by Fonseca and Tavares, songwriters Hülsmann describes as formative influences in the 1990s. Angolan singer Aline Frazão leads the performance, her voice riding a fast Baião pulse that immediately establishes the group’s rhythmic vitality. Frazão also takes the lead on Hülsmann’s “Hora Azul,” contributing her own Portuguese lyrics. “From the beginning,” Hülsmann says, “one of the central ideas of the project was to have everyone contribute their own character to the mix.” Frazão’s intuitive songwriting approach adds a deeply personal layer to the piece.
Norwegian vocalist Live Maria Roggen brings a contrasting Scandinavian sensibility to the album. Her pieces “Felicia’s Song” and “Moonfish Dance” unfold as lyrical narratives shaped by a highly interactive band sound, with violin and cello circling Hülsmann’s responsive piano lines. Roggen also wrote the lyrics to “Walkside,” a composition originally from Hülsmann’s quartet repertoire, now recontextualized as a bridge between her earlier work and the broader octet palette.
The three voices on While I Was Away are sharply individual yet blend with striking ease. On “Tic Toc,” they converge in a rhythmically charged, spoken-word-like unison before splintering into layered harmonies. “You Come Back” heightens the drama, with Roggen and Frazão weaving harmonies around Michael Schiefel’s intense, music-theatre-inflected narration. A longtime collaborator of Hülsmann’s since their student days in 1991, Schiefel contributes the original “Iskele,” a nocturnal ballad filled with dreamlike imagery, where the voices unite again in a luminous coda.
On “Sleep,” Frazão sings excerpts from Emily Dickinson’s “Sleep Is Supposed To Be,” juxtaposing rest and awakening as Eva Kruse’s bass solo introduces a moment of calm suspension. The instrumental section opens into spontaneous interplay, Hülsmann tracing subtle, evocative lines through the ensemble. “Up Up…,” with Schiefel on lead vocals, allows the song form to dissolve seamlessly into improvisation, giving space to drummer Eva Klesse, the strings, and the rhythm section to expand the narrative without breaking its flow.
With While I Was Away, Julia Hülsmann presents not just a new ensemble but a widened musical horizon—one where voices, strings, rhythm, and improvisation meet on equal footing. Hülsmann and her octet will present music from the album in concerts across Germany and Switzerland in March 2026.
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