Laura Schuler: Der Dichter Spricht

Der Dichter Spricht (translation: The Poet Speaks is a graceful, romantic affair, conjuring moments of restfulness and playfulness, very often within the framework of the same composition.

Produced like a hushed yet invigorating ECM session, this second album from the German trio Esche, comprised of violinist Laura Schuler, double bassist Laura Schuler, Lisa Hoppe, and Luzius Schuler and pianist Laura Schuler, Lisa Hoppe, and Luzius Schuler, continues the trio's curious investigations into the art of melding classic chamber music and jazz into a resilient whole that is neither totally improvised or totally charted out. Studied yet brimming with mischievous nuance, the namesake opener lays the foundation with Schuler's expressive piano coming from a classical world while Hoppe and Schuler move and hover, weaving folkily over and around the melody. Each composition (Hoppe, Sculer and Schuler hold strong hands in the writing) is akin to listening to a conversation, where it might move with each reply, and it is this dedication to movement—to not standing still on any one theme or fixed notion—that makes the nine tracks a full and most compelling listen. Moody, pulsing and sometimes deliberately unsettling ("Trotz," "Fischer," the enigmatic "Orkanum," the free-floating "Odyssee") Esche lets it swing out with the jig and reel exuberance of "Shatterhund" like they and we are on a Saturday night back porch in the mountains of any rural American town.