Greater contrasts are actually hardly imaginable. Here jazz, which made its way through the big cities of the 20th century as a rough crony. There Emily Dickinson, the quiet lyricist from a Calvinist family, who spent her entire life in seclusion in rural Amherst / Massachusetts. When Dickinson died in 1886 at the age of 56, jazz had not yet been born. But only a dark foreboding that wafted over the sultry swamps of the Mississippi Delta.

Does that fit together? Certainly. However, it takes a rare talent for this coming together. Great musicality. A feeling for words, images and moods. And a sense for melodies that stick in the ear and yet touch the heart, in that brittle, mysterious way that is Dickinson's own. Julia Hülsmann, described by the WELT AM SONNTAG as "currently the most remarkable pianist on the jazz scene," has all these gifts in abundance.

One has known this since her ACT debut "Scattering Poems" appeared in 2003. The "gentle stroke of genius" (ROLLING STONE), which contained settings of poems by the American avant-garde lyricist E. E. Cummings, was honored with the German Jazz Award. With the follow-up album, the Randy Newman homage "Come Closer", Hülsmann also succeeded in creating a wonderfully coherent fusion of lyrics, contemporary jazz and pop. The WAZ, for example, praised the Berlin-based pianist for having succeeded in "paying sovereign homage to a great songwriter and yet developing a refreshingly self-sufficient sonic adventure. Randy Newman has hardly ever been heard in such an exciting and intense way, even on his own records."

No wonder that Julia Hülsmann felt so comfortable with Randy Newman. After all, she is also an excellent songwriter. And it is not the least merit of "Good Morning Midnight" that Emily Dickinson suddenly comes across like a contemporary of the 21st century. Despite her formally rigorous verse. Despite the content, which may sometimes seem alien to us in its pursuit of renunciation and in its quiet, puritanical contemplation. Hülsmann handles these poems respectfully and carefully. And yet finds enough harmonic and rhythmic areas of friction.

The intense collaboration with her trio companions Marc Muellbauer (bass) and Heinrich Köbberling (drums) is one of Hülsmann's most important musical constants. A new addition is now the singer Roger Cicero, son of the pianist Eugen Cicero, who died much too early. It is a deliberate casting against the grain. While in the past two recordings it was the vocalists Rebekka Bakken and Anna Lauvergnac with whom Hülsmann successfully collaborated, now it is a man, of all people, who interprets the lines of a woman's poem.

Cicero, who has recently been able to make a name for himself with a wider audience with the "Soulounge" collective, is a virtuoso in the Kurt Elling tradition. When he first heard Hülsmann's Dickinson arrangements, he was clear: "This is decidedly unusual. I have never sung anything like this before." All of that resonates in the vocal chords now: Curiosity and doubt, exuberance and introspection, instinct and intellectual taming. It is the adequate realization of Dickinson's lyricism, which celebrates nature and light - and yet grants so much space to the dark and the musing on transience.

Julia Hülsmann has selected ten poems from Dickinson's enormously extensive estate for "Good Morning Midnight." Intuitively, her music picks up on what is implied in the texts. Be it the carefully searching piano solo in "I Cannot See", be it the insistent eighth notes that give shape to the need to communicate in "Tell Her", be it the calm flow that carries away the ballad "My River". The latter is given an unexpected extra dimension by Tilman Ehrhorn's gentle use of electronica. A new color in Julia Hülsmann's work, as are the warm horn sections reminiscent of Gil Evans that appear on two tracks. They were arranged by Hülsmann's bassist and life partner Marc Muellbauer. It was he who introduced the pianist to Nick Drake's enigmatic "Riverman," the only foreign composition on the CD. It fits congenially into the overall picture.

The supposed contrasts between art song and pop, between 19th-century American lyricism and contemporary European jazz, are transformed into blissful commonalities on this record. "Good Morning Midnight. In the deepest night the sun rises.