Imprint

'Imprint' is the second ECM album by Germany's Julia Hülsmann 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 Hülsmann 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. Hülsmann'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 Köbberling also write for the band, the pieces they bring in adher to Hülsman'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 Hülsmann'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 Hülsmann (piano), Marc Muellbauer (double-bass), Heinrich Köbberling (drums)