As her collaborations with Rebekka Bakken, Anna Lauvergnac and Roger Cicero demonstrate, whenever the Berlin-based pianist Julia Hülsmann works with vocalists, magic tends to occur. The pianist's strong affinity with US poets and lyricists (Emily Dickinson, E.E. Cummings, Randy Newman) continues with this latest ECM disc which – alongside classic Weill songs – includes some of his lesser known settings of texts by Ann Ronnell, Maxwell Anderson, Ira Gershwin, Ogden Nash and Langston Hughes. Featuring the New York-based vocalist Theo Bleckmann, from the very opening bar of ‘Mack The Knife’, announced by Hülsmann's slowly chiming open fifths in the left hand, these supremely understated reinterpretations completely capture the imagination. ‘Alabama Song’ is performed as a free-floating instrumental, Hülsmann tapping out the familiar verse with a strange sense of urgency. Arranged by bassist Muellbauer, ‘September Song’ epitomises the wonderful transparency of the group sound. Hülsmann's three Walt Whitman settings are uniformly fine, particularly the dreamlike ‘A Noiseless Patient Spider’, which sees a huge reverb applied to Bleckmann's vocal and Hülsmann's hauntingly simple accompaniment slowly coming into focus as if from afar, before a final blossoming in the deeply grooving outro. Bleckmann shows himself to be completely in tune with Hülsmann's less-is-more aesthetic, bringing a moving sensitivity to the vocal line, which is often subtly shadowed or enveloped by trumpeter and flugelhornist Tom Arthurs. This fifth ECM date shows, yet again, Hülsmann's singular way with words.