Nadje Noordhuis: Full Circle
Newvelle Records

While jazz musicians always hope magic will happen at a session, in being something that can't be manufactured it often fails to materialize. Yet in those rare cases when it does, its presence is undeniable, a case in point Nadje Noordhuis's Full Circle. There's nothing radical about the set-up—four high-calibre musicians gathering to record the leader's material—but the oft-lyrical music they produced on March 31, 2022 at New York's East Side Sound borders on transcendent. With sterling accompaniment by pianist Fred Hersch, bassist Thomas Morgan, and drummer Rudy Royston, the Australian trumpeter/flugelhornist has released one of the year's most rewarding albums.

Noordhuis wrote a gorgeous set of compositions for her partners to play, and they responded in kind with performances of a supremely high order. Hersch elevates the session, but the same could be said of Morgan and Royston. In liner notes, Elan Mehler, one of the album's two producers, describes their playing as revelatory, and he's not far wrong. He's also correct in noting the “generosity of spirit and the effortlessness in Nadje's playing.”

The path leading to Full Circle wasn't easy. While Noordhuis showed at a young age a preternatural trumpet-playing ability (Mehler reports that in the third grade, she “picked up the trumpet during band at school and was able to play a C Major scale the first time she laid a finger on the instrument”), the years that followed included many stops and starts. After abandoning piano (her first instrument) and trumpet studies in high school, she majored in music engineering but after graduating found jobs for female engineers scarce. Returning to trumpet, she applied to the undergraduate program in trumpet performance at Victorian College of the Arts in Melbourne and was later accepted into the Masters program at the Manhattan School of Music. Further struggles, however, prompted her to take an administration job at the NYC school before deciding to throw her hat into the ring one more time, and this time it stuck. Such a history could foster despair and bitterness, but none of that emerges on Full Circle. Her music brims with humanity and a life-affirming embrace, and any trace of cynicism or self-pity is absent.

The powerful impression left by the music is reinforced by Newvelle Records' classy presentation. With a 180-gram vinyl album housed within a gatefold sleeve, the release evokes the classic feel of albums released decades before downloads and CDs. The sound quality is also top-notch, with the production team capturing the performances with crystal clarity. Coupled with the release is a digital download that augments the vinyl's eight tracks with an enticingly melodic and soulful bonus, “The Closer.”

The folk-tinged “Little Song” introduces the set on a high, with Noordhuis's magnificent horn soaring across a sparkling base distinguished by Royston's brilliant cymbal and hi-hat flourishes, Morgan's authoritative presence, and Hersch's astute voicings. If the opener reveals the strength of her writing, the haunting second piece, “Hudson,” shows it even more. Similar to “Little Song,”“Hudson” exudes a timeless folk quality but with this time lyricism more pronounced. Things take an ECM-styled turn for “Northern Star,” an ethereal meditation replete with ambient atmospheres and cymbal washes that crest like ocean waves. As Hersch sprinkles the air, Noordhuis's enraptured horn floats above like a bird flying in slow motion. Elsewhere, the solemn setting “Entwine” is dignified in the stateliness of its lament, “Braidwood” finds the quartet in a languorous and blue mood, and “Nebula” caps the release with a poetic rubato expression.

November 2022