The prize-winner concert for the renowned SWR and Rhineland Palatinate Jazzpreis, which has existed since 1981 and is worth 15,000 €, has been taking place at the Enjoy Jazz Festival in dasHaus in Ludwigshafen since 2012. In 2016, the jury selected pianist and composer Julia Hülsmann, born 1968 in Bonn, giving the reason that “she has developed her own very individual sensitive piano language with which she unpretentiously builds bridges between the worlds of poetry and song.” Hülsmann became known to broader audiences in 2003, through her artistic engagement with avant-garde poetry by E. E. Cummings, in collaboration with singer Rebekka Bakken. “Scattering Poems” was also commercially successful and lead to similar pieces of work with texts by Randy Newman and Emily Dickinson, together with singer Anna Lauvergnac and the late Roger Cicero. Since 2008, Hülsmann, who has consistently been a member of a working band with Muellbauer and Heinrich Köbberling, has been releasing albums on ECM. Most recently she released “A clear Midnight” – in which she works with pieces by Kurt Weill and texts by Walt Whitman, and is supported by singer Theo Bleckmann. Both sides of her work will be presented at the prize-winner concert. Hülsmann has also been active in the German Jazz Musicians' Union.
