Nils Wulker / Munchner Rundfunkorchester/ Hahn - Continuum

Continuously wonderful is the career of trumpeter and composer Nils Wülker. The upward curve that the internationally renowned musician from Germany has described with his last three studio albums now crowns his masterpiece to date, 'Continuum'. Recorded in the fall of 2021 with Wülker's superb rhythm section and the award-winning BR Munich Radio Orchestra, this orchestral, wide-screen yet intricate album will be released in the spring of 2022, fittingly on Wülker's 20th anniversary on stage. Unpredictable and beyond all genre boundaries, "Continuum" presents fascinating, overwhelming new music: a force of nature composed down to the last detail with lively improvisational peaks - an acoustic panorama whose every musical moment radiates with energy, happiness and confidence. "The circle is closing," says Nils Wülker when describing the evolution of his now twelfth album - from maximum individual work, after all, he recorded and produced large parts of the previous album under pandemic conditions in his own home studio and remotely, to sixty musicians making acoustic music together in one room. The ten pieces are written directly for the orchestra, which here not only accompanies but interacts, even leads. "My way of writing runs through all the music," recognizes Nils Wülker. In two cases with amplification: "Munich Afternoon" and "Landscape" were written together with Massive Attack and Hollywood maestro Craig Armstrong, with whom Wülker has collaborated many times in the past. Also featured are four brand new Wülker compositions and four thoroughly renewed and expanded tracks from his latest album GO, arranged by Swedish conductor Hans Ek, whom Nils Wülker met during performances with the E.S.T. Symphony and who had already arranged the trumpeter's own songs for a performance with the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra in February 2021. "Wülker's beautiful trumpet playing flies freely over the orchestral soundscapes here," recognized Ek, who is also conductor of the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra. 'These are compositions of melodic richness and intuitive but crystal-clear imagination.'