Julia Hulsmann Good Morning Midnight Past Is Present Series Vinyl

Good Morning Midnight (2006) closes Julia Hülsmann's ACT trilogy exploring poetry and jazz – after E. E. Cummings and Randy Newman, this time dedicated to Emily Dickinson, largely unknown in her lifetime and today regarded as one of America's most important poets. For the then little-known pianist, the series marked her step into wider public awareness and the beginning of a highly acclaimed international career. For vocalist Roger Cicero it was an important step into the limelight – soon after, he became a genuine pop star in Germany, before his one-of-a-kind story ended abruptly in 2016, at just 45. The contrasts could hardly be greater: urban-influenced jazz on one side, on the other the words of a poet who spent her life in seclusion in rural Massachusetts. Yet jazz works here less as a style than as a vocabulary, linking seemingly distant worlds. Carried by Hülsmann's trio with Marc Muellbauer and Heinrich Köbberling, coloured by subtle electronics, bandoneon and brass, Cicero finds a tone between curiosity and doubt, exuberance and introspection – “I've never sung anything like this before.” A wide arc between poetry and jazz, between the 19th and the 21st centuries – and a reminder that new music can be found not only in the present, but also in the past.