hilde is the all-female chamber quartet, based in North Rhine-Westphalia and London, and playing art songs that are neither jazz nor contemporary chamber music, neither ambient nor chanson, and certainly not Third Stream of any kind. The quartet features vocalist Marie Daniels (of The Dorf), violinist Julia Brüssel, cellist Emily Wittbrodt, and trombonist Maria Trautmann. Timbre is hilde’s third album, and it was recorded at Studio Nord in Bremen in November 2025.
The new album is based on hilde’s live performances, in which one piece consistently flows into the next, following the sequence of moods. Improvised and composed elements are rearranged anew with each performance. Obviously, Timbre offers the rich timbres of the genre-defying hilde with its unique instrumentation. Hilde acts like a tight, ego-less, and inventive unit that moves seamlessly between abstract and adventurous sonic invention and traditional, orthodox grace.
The new album is a cycle of fifteen poetic and highly melodic songs and arresting, focusing on fragile relationships, and delivered by Daniels’ warm voice, and more daring and sometimes even disorienting, improvised instrumental pieces that together add to a complex, openly emotional story. All the music and lyrics are credited to hilde and its spontaneous improvisations. This cycle invites the listener into the quartet’s unique musical universe, free from all categorical constraints, and asks to surrender to its own unpredictable and free-associative images and associations, but guarantees a most rewarding listening experience.
German music journalist Wolf Kampmann, who accompanies hilde since its first album, writes that Timbre «needs no definitions, reference points, or explanations, but unfolds within the coordinates of time and space with a naturalness and independence, as if it had always been there, simply waiting for the right personalities capable of doing it justice with the appropriate sovereignty and humility».
Eyal Hareuveni
Julia Brüssel (violin); Marie Daniels (voice); Maria Trautmann (trombone); Emily Wittbrodt (cello).
