Julia Hulsmann Trio - Imprint

Imprint is the second ECM album by Germany's Julia H�lsmann Trio, and a follow-up to the critically-lauded The End of a Summer, the group's ECM debut released in 2008. Both as a player and writer H�lsmann conveys a sense of poetic compression. Her themes stand out in stark relief, as if stamped or printed into the surrounding improvisation, and are highly memorable. She says: My music is all about melody. It's that simple.

This is a group with a strong identity of its own, developed steadily since the trio's founding in 1997. H�lsmann's well-crafted melodies - drawing inspiration from classical music and pop as well as the jazz tradition - establish the atmospheric climate of the music. Bassist Marc Muellbauer and drummer Heinrich K�bberling also write for the band, the pieces they bring in adher to H�lsman's emphasis on the centrality of melody.

Their communicative power has been felt especially in Germany, where the group has a strong following. Their pre-ECM 2001 album Scattering Poems sold more than 10,000 copies in Germany and won them a German Jazz Award. Subsequent exposure on ECM has brought the trio's music to the world.

In the UK, Jazzwise magazine described H�lsmann's ECM debut as Full of elegantly-constructed melodies that seem natural extensions of the thematic material at hand: there is a kind of musical poetry at work here which is as absorbing as it is fulfilling.

Personnel: Julia H�lsmann (piano), Marc Muellbauer (double-bass), Heinrich K�bberling (drums)