hilde

hilde

(DE)

Cologne’s creative music scene provides a hothouse atmosphere where adventurous players from different traditions often cross genre-lines – both out of curiosity and community. Few working ensembles reflect that diversity more vividly than hilde, a wildly versatile quartet that collides the sophisticated arrangements of chamber music with the elegant melodies of art song and improvisational exploration of free jazz. As heard on the group’s most recent album “Tide” most of the material is built around the sweet-toned but precise singing of Marie Daniels, held aloft, complemented or bruised by shape-shifting arrangements sculpted by cellist Emily Wittbrodt, violinist Julia Brüssel and trombonist Maria Trautmann.

As with an increasing number of musicians devoted to improvisation, hilde’s gorgeous music doesn’t fit neatly within any given genre, and it is that casual agility and a devotion to honoring the history and fundamentals of each sound the quartet adopts that makes its output so arresting. hilde can literally sound like several different groups during one of its meticulously crafted performances, but rather than feeling chameleonic that range all radiates from a single aesthetic root. The members of the quartet are devoted to making heady, rigorous music whatever its form.