Lions sounds like Yelena Eckemoff letting go, following her muse with a focused fervor. The music—structured gorgeousness in the embrace of the improvisational elan of Andersen and Hart—is Yelena’s strongest statement to date, a flawless and beguiling work of art.
Effortlessly modern, with nothing to prove beyond total involvement in the moment, Eckemoff presents the listener with a thoroughly modern, yet intimate and highly personal sound-world. All of the compositions on Leaving Everything Behind are Eckemoff’s originals. Several of these date from the 1980s; a time when she was just beginning her exploration into jazz. Interestingly, these pieces seem highly refined, replete with airy, vague harmonies that refer equally to Bill Evans and Claude Debussy.
Leading an impressionistic trio that leans more toward ECM than Windham Hill, this is introspective music for the neo-classical fan that knows how to recognize the real deal.
A well balanced and focused jazz trio can create a superb ambiance. Yelena Eckemoff is using the trio format to capture the essence of seasons. Cold Sun was released last year and it reflected the bleakness of winter with icy, crystalline notes and reserved arrangements. She is exploring spring with and the compositions on Grass Catching the Wind are warmer, brighter.
The music is intelligent without being pedantic, sophisticated without being sterile, creative without being indulgent, and sensitive without being desultory. Tunes bounce, weave, collide and open up as temperatures and musical barometric pressures change.
FORGET-me-NOT is an album without borders, a gallery of animate snapshots that float on the wind. Its fluid transitions hang like a necklace from the neck of a mother who stares through the window of her past and finds a thousand songs to sing. Let’s hope this is a sign of things to come for an artist who continues to add feathers to her wings with each new release.
Eckemoff has been establishing her reputation for creative music that is both free and romantic. Slower tempos reinforce the modest and restrained expressions, yet at the same time we discover that this group’s vision is to make transcendent musical statements. The result is je ne sais quoi, with fascinating elements and qualities which are hard to describe. To fully understand and appreciate the nuance of this music, tune into the emotional content of the pieces. See if they don’t become memorable as they resonate from heart to heart across cultures.
This is a disc comprised of ten original compositions with a unifying theme: a floating, dreamy atmosphere filled with cerebral and stimulating tone poems. Eckemoff weaves her different influences into her improvisations with seamless ease. …An exciting composer and improviser, Yelena Eckemoff has produced a thought provoking and engaging record that fuses multiple musical currents into a unique whole.
Yelena Eckemoff writes music which is rich in broader atmospheres than is usual in jazz. She moves easily between composed music with something of a modern, impressionistic classical feel to it, and grooves which are thoroughly jazzy, and there is also that feeling of freshness that comes from different cultures mixing together in the music, just as they do in the musician. …This is music with that quiet depth that comes from a really rich musical hinterland.
This is just top notch jazz played beautifully. … Forget-Me-Not will become an album you will never forget. …This is the kind of jazz I enjoy listening to and one I will recommend to anyone who comes my way.
