Cold Sun

Amazon reviews

Amazon カスタマー
5.0 out of 5 stars Both the jacket and the playing content are great.
Reviewed in Japan on August 22, 2019 Verified Purchase

The music contents of jazzy are also great in the classic atmosphere. But none of the cd has changed much. Common points of Scandinavian players. I want players over Bobo Stenson to come out also.

steve
4.0 out of 5 stars Cold Sun
Reviewed in Italy on April 12, 2018 Verified Purchase

Cold Sun: another jewel from the oven by pianist Y. Eckemoff. In trio accompanied by Peter Erskine on drums and Mads Vinding on bass the songs are heard in a very relaxing way. The poetic and melodic vein of the trio is certainly of a high level. That’s a good job. To be heard in silence.

tselliot
5.0 out of 5 stars beautiful
Reviewed in the United States on September 21, 2013 Verified Purchase
I’m always in search for great Piano Trios. This is inline with that tradition. Happily these are not rehashed Jazz Standards but fresh compositions to surely add to your mood.

Gina Watlington
5.0 out of 5 stars UNIQUE, EDGY, MODERN JAZZ
Reviewed in the United States on July 16, 2010 Verified Purchase

Cold Sun – Yelena Eckemoff, Mads Vinding, and Peter Erskine
Yelena has a new CD out and another one is available for pre-order through Amazon.com. Cold Sun is a collection of jazz pieces with a winter theme. The new CD, Grass Catching the Wind, will feature pieces representing spring, summer, and fall. Yelena, who studied piano at the Moscow State Conservatory, collaborated with Peter Erskine on drums and Mads Vinding on double-bass. Mads Vinding is in Denmark and has 3 Grammy’s to his credit. He has “played with the majority of jazz musicians worth playing with, and today he plays with the ones satisfying his concepts of what music ought to sound like”. Peter Erskine is in California and has also won several Grammy’s. He has worked with Steely Dan, Diana Krall, Pat Metheny, Joni Mitchell and various symphony orchestras world-wide. The photography on the cover, featuring snow scenes in Blanch, NC was done by Nick Eckemoff. If you are looking for smooth elevator jazz this is not for you, but if you want unique, edgy, modern jazz you should check these out.

Max
5.0 out of 5 stars Not your Grandpa’s Jazz Album
Reviewed in the United States on July 26, 2010 Verified Purchase

This album comprises the next level of Yelena’s journey of redefining her unique style of pleasantly dissonant and highly complex harmonic compositions to perform in a band setting. As a huge fan of her earlier electronic works, I was not initially not all that enthused with the shift to jazz, however that was before I heard this CD. You will want to play it in your car, your art gallery, your home for distinguished dinner guests, even on your iPod on your bike or treadmill. The title track is particularly amazing.

Jane Thompson
5.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful!!!
Reviewed in the United States on July 18, 2010 Verified Purchase

The music in this CD is as beautiful as the photo on the cover! The titles are perfect for the selections. The music is at times intense and at times so easy to listen to. I can’t wait to hear the next CD from Yelena!Grass Catching the Wind.

Vittorio Lo Conte for Music Zoom

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Russian pianist Yelena Eckemoff in this 2009 engagement is with the bass player Mads Vinding and drummer Peter Erskine. Noticeably, her music has evolved over the years thanks to her collaborations with musicians who not only performed studio music, but also made a hunch for new ideas. Here you can enjoy this representation of the “cold sun” in winter, just above the horizon and with the long shadows that give the landscape special light. The cover photo is an emblem of winter in Russia, but the song that opens the album is full of allusions: the chords of the theme intro, performed without accompaniment, gives an idea of ​​the cold, then her collaborators join in, and the song “warms up:” the rays of the sun and the heat of the double bass, the drums with their subtle sharpness on the cymbals, perhaps to represent the ice and its crunches under the steps. After Blizzard presents chaotic moments with arpeggios on the high range of the piano supported by the drums, which after the storm slowly reorganizes. Very expressive is drum solo by Erskine – a poet who knows how to sing even rhythms. Silence is full of notes, suspended moments, but also of tension, that apparent calm in the cold sun where no leaf moves. It’s a long song, over nine minutes, but it feels that under the surface something happens as the trio manages to express emotions that are directed to the listener. Very nice is the Winter finale, almost fourteen minutes, with Vinding’s warm bass taking the center of the stage in many places. A very enjoyable record, especially in the seasonal cold nights.

Original Italian:

La pianista russa Yelena Eckemoff in questa incisione del 2009 è insieme al contrabbassista Mads Vinding ed a Peter Erskine alla batteria. Si può notare come la sua musica abbia subito un’evoluzione negli anni grazie alle collaborazioni con musicisti che  non soltanto hanno eseguito la musica in studio ma anche fatto da fermento per nuove idee. Qui si può godere di questa rappresentazione del “sole freddo” in inverno, appena poco sopra l’orizzonte e con le ombre lunghe che danno al paesaggio luci particolari. La foto di copertina è un emblema dell’inverno in Russia, ma anche l’omonimo brano che apre l’album è ricco di allusioni: gli accordi del tema, eseguiti senza accompagnamento, danno un’idea del freddo, poi arrivano i suoi collaboratori ed il brano si “riscalda”, i raggi del sole ed il calore del contrabbasso, la batteria con i suoi sottili acuti sui piatti, forse a rappresentare il ghiaccio ed i suoi scriccolii sotto i passi. After Blizzard presenta momenti di caos con gli arpeggi sull’estremità destra del pianoforte sostenuti dalla batteria che dopo la tempesta lentamente si riorganizzano. Molto espressivo l’assolo di Erskine alla batteria, un poeta che sa fare cantare anche i ritmi. Silence è ricco di note, di momenti sospesi, ma anche di tensione, quella calma apparente sotto il sole freddo in cui non si muove una foglia. È un lungo brano, oltre i nove minuti, ma si avverte che sotto la superfice qualcosa succede mentre il trio riesce a esprimere delle emozioni controllate che arrivano diritte all’ascoltatore. Molto bello il finale Winter, quasi quattordici minuti, con il caldo contrabbasso di Vinding al centro dell’attenzione per ampi momenti dell’esecuzione. Un disco godibilissimo, specie nelle notti della stagione fredda.

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Lee and J.J. MacFadden for Bristol Herald Courier

Born and raised in Moscow, Russia, Eckemoff began playing the piano by age 4, and at the age of 7, she began attending a Gnessins 10-year school for musically gifted children. She studied with Anna Pavlovna Kantor (who trained renowned pianist Evgeny Kissin) as well as Galina Nikolaevna Egiazarova; her studies were extensive. In 1991, Eckemoff started living permanently in the United States, where she continued playing concerts and composing music.

She sits at the piano with pencil and paper to compose, improvising as she goes. With a background in classical style and further studies in rock, jazz, and world music, Eckemoff has joined her talents on this CD with Mads Vinding (double-bass) and Peter Erskine (drums). Eckemoff reveals her love of nature on this album with an in-depth look at winter, which she captures in many facets.

The title song, which ends hauntingly, is a good introduction to “After Blizzard,” while the brilliant “Stubborn” puts Vinding’s double-bass to truly creative use. The less edgy “Romance by the Fireplace” is upbeat, even playful, a stark contrast to the ominous, moody “Silence” and the more cautious, sometimes capering dissonance of “Snow Bliss.”

— Street date for “Cold Sun” is Apr. 12. For more information, visit www.yelenamusic.com and click on “discography” for free MP3 samples of this and other CDs.

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Tyran Grillo for ECM Reviews

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This album represents the most fruitful shift in Eckemoff’s career by joining her with bassist Mads Vinding and drummer Peter Erskine. Her relationship with the latter is particularly striking and achieves a clearly discernible balance of distance and intimacy throughout. Erskine’s profoundly subtle craft—sharing peerage with Jon Christensen especially in the use of cymbals—ever so delicately paints in those gaps that the piano leaves untouched in its abyss. His gestures swirl like snowdrifts, each the afterthought of something internally more dramatic. These wintry nuances crystallize in sonic postcards such as “Scents of Christmas,” “Romance by the Fireplace,” and “Freezing Point.”

TG: Cold Sun comes across to me as a distinctly airy album. Its feet touch the ground only occasionally, as in the gnarled groove of “Stubborn,” making for a, dare I say, mysterious experience. Did this album develop any differently than the rest?

YE: There was The Call as a starter. Then my group gained a double-bassist and an oboe/saxophone player, and we rehearsed actively as a band, played gigs, and performed many new compositions that actually did not get incorporated into any of the CDs yet. Then there was Advocate of Love (2008)—a mostly trio album, reflecting a somewhat jazzier feel. The Cold Sun material was formed out of my 4-year experience working actively with my ensemble. The material of this winter album required a more improvisatory approach. And I reached out to the musicians who I thought would work best for that project.

Other tracks are more abstract and prompt us into deeper listening. “Silence,” for example, is not a literal description but more an evocation of state and mind. Like fingers running through hair, Eckemoff’s notes comb the ether. “White Magic” is a subdued evocation, which blends effectively into the touching dissonances of “Snow Bliss.” Yet it is in the throes of “Winter” that we at last encounter the synthesis of the album’s many threads. Brimming with glorious leaps and bounds, as well as more subterranean reflections, it brings us delicate closure to a moody and free-flowing album that is sure to please fans of Tord Gustavsen and Marcin Wasilewski.

TG: The piano trio is clearly a comfortable format for you. What is it about the combination that appeals to you and how does it enliven your expressivity?

YE: I suspect the piano trio will always be my favorite format, because I am a skilled pianist and the piano has always been a dominating expressive source for me. However, I do like the variety of the sounds, and I get many ideas that call for different sets of instruments (that I hope to see through in the future). But the intimacy and perfect balance of timbres in the trio is the most comfortable setup that surely has my first love.

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Peter Bacon for The Jazz Breakfast

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On a day when the sky is blue and crisp and the sun is reflecting off snow, what better album to listen to than this piano trio disc by the Russian, now US resident, Yelena Eckemoff with Danish bassist Mads Vinding and American drummer Peter Erskine.

Is suppose it was Erskine’s name that first drew me to this disc. He is such a versatile percussionist, one minute driving a big band, the next grooving in the Diana Krall band, and then, especially when left to his own devices, as on his ECM trio discs with John Taylor and Palle Danielsson, a highly melodic colourist, minimal and letting the silences speak as strongly as the cymbal splashes.

There is an amazing moment nearly five minutes into the second track here, After Blizzard, when Eckemoff and Erskine sound like splintering, shattering, skidding and tinkling ice, yet not in a twee, delicate way but in a strong and slightly scary, elemental way.

This long disc (over 70 minutes) is filled with such amazing moments, as Eckemoff brings her strong classical background and her impeccable technique to bear upon highly creative, and sometimes quite jazzy, compositions. It sounds like a lot of the music is through composed but there is clearly still instinctive improvisation going on all the way through, too.

Vinding is one of those Scandinavian bassists who seems to channel folk melodies along with a muscular and musical tone and highly adaptive style.

The titles of the pieces say a lot about the music: Silence, Stubborn, Freezing Point, Snow Bliss, White Magic, but in amongst these white vistas there are also Scents of Christmas and Romance by the Fireplace.

I have been reading The True Deceiver, by Tove Jansson, the Finnish writer and philosopher best known for her Moomin stories for children, and this disc feels like the musical equivalent of Jansson’s prose: crisp, clean, concise in expression, full of space, and suggesting even greater depths of wisdom, and subtlety both of emotion and thought, beneath the surface.

 

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Bruce Lindsay for All About Jazz

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Cold Sun could readily be considered as a concept album, if that term hadn’t been so abused over the years. Pianist Yelena Eckemoff has taken her inspiration for these ten original tunes from the winter season—perhaps in her native Russia, perhaps from her adopted homeland of North Carolina—and conjures up many different images of winter in her sparse and delicate trio arrangements. The starkly beautiful photographs on the CD cover give a clear indication of the music within, while the crystal clear production—sound engineer Rich Breen deserves a name check for this—means that each instrument comes across perfectly.

Other reviewers have alluded to the ECM-like qualities of this album, and the comparison has merit: the young Polish pianist Marcin Wasilewski is an obvious point of reference, for example. Eckemoff, who has recorded classical as well as jazz albums, plays with a delicate touch: each note counts, none is wasted. Drummer Peter Erskine and bassist Mads Vinding make an experienced and exceptionally sympathetic team: Vinding also appears on Eckemoff’s Grass Catching The Wind (L&H Production, 2010), which is inspired by spring, summer and fall. Erskine and Vinding play with similar delicacy and economy, resisting the temptation to add too much even in their occasional solos or in the more improvised passages. The trio offers a master class in the use of space, of which many younger players would do well to take note.

“Winter,” at nearly 14 minutes the album’s longest track, blends passages of great beauty with some of Eckemoff’s most assertive playing, although she stops well short of aggression. The interplay between the three musicians is fascinating and, like much of this recording, reveals more of itself on each listening. The tune, along with “Cold Sun,” suggests complex and dissonant feelings in contrast to the generally brighter and more optimistic tone of the rest of the music.

That optimism is exemplified by the upbeat “Stubborn” which opens with Vinding’s superb bass sound—round, fat, slinky, it’s one of the most gorgeous double-bass tones in jazz—accompanied by Erskine’s funky brush work. Eckemoff adds some stabbing piano lines and the trio gets under way with the album’s most immediately engaging composition. By contrast, “Romance by the Fireplace” is a delightfully seductive late-night tune, with Vinding playing the lead line as Eckemoff and Erskine create a swinging groove. The remaining tunes bring yet more images of winter to the fore with all three musicians proving themselves to be crucial to the overall mood: the exception being the solo piano piece “Snow Bliss,” which Eckemoff plays in a meditative and reflective style.

Winter might well be the inspiration, but the music on Cold Sun is strangely warm and comforting as well as beautiful.

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Warren Allen for All About Jazz

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Pianist/composer Yelena Eckemoff works in that rarified area between modern classical chamber music and progressive jazz. Born and raised in Russia, Eckemoff attended the Moscow State Conservatory, where she studied concert piano and grew up in a strong classical foundation. She came to the United States before the collapse of the Soviet Union, and continues to compose and perform.

While many of her albums have tended towards a classical vein, Cold Sun provides an exploration of improvisation within the setup of the jazz piano trio. Built around a winter theme, the album finds the three players exploring a sparse, almost desolate sonic territory. What stands out most in these wide-open spaces is the tremendous chemistry between the musicians. With Danish bassist Mads Vinding and drummer Peter Erskine—two veterans who work with the best jazz company—the band communicates in a way that evokes an easy mood and the sounds of nature. The bass becomes the rhythm of feet falling in snow, while cymbals mimic breath or wind, and the piano traces a landscape from runs sloping up and down the keyboard.

Four extended pieces juxtapose with six slightly shorter, more traditionally “jazzy” songs. “After Blizzard” is a kind of shifting aural painting that evolves over ten minutes, changing tempo and feel as it goes. Eckemoff provides swelling glissandi and other graceful ornamentations, while Erskine contributes an eclectic groove to the changes of the song. “Scents of Christmas,” by contrast, strongly suggests pianist Bill Evans’ classic trio, with its easy, ruminative piano, strong leading bass voice, and bone dry cymbal work.

The line between the melodies themselves and the improvisation is often hard to distinguish, but they’re both clearly defined. Individual solos are fairly brief, and the result is that the nuances and personality of each musician shines out at almost any given point, lending tremendous nuance and tenderness. Eckemoff has both the ability to let a moment of silence stretch time between her phrases and the appreciation to let her sidemen ornament the quiet in their own way. Between laying rock solid grooves, Vinding often solos high up on the bass, imparting a sound like a pizzicato cello. And Erskine always seems to be doing something to build the atmosphere, as he drops ephemeral suggestions of time that shape without constraints.

Lovers of the great piano trios found on the ECM label (such as those led by pianists Bobo Stenson, Tord Gustavsen, and Marcin Wasilewski) will find a lot to like in this potentially overlooked self production. But so will anyone who enjoys relaxing music with some depth to it. It’s music that goes well with good wine, firelight, or the sight of snow outside.

 

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Jon Neudorf for Sea of Tranquility

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Cold Sun is the latest CD from Russian born pianist and composer Yelena Eckemoff. Yelena studied piano at the Piano School of the Moscow State Conservatory and graduated with a Master’s Degree in piano performance. She has made and appeared on many recordings which brings us to her latest CD. Joining Yelena are two household names in the world of jazz: Danish bassist Mads Vinding and drummer Peter Erskine who has worked with the likes Steely Dan, Joni Mitchell and Pat Metheny.

The acoustic trio has produced a modern jazz record of outstanding quality although this one may take some time before it sinks in. The melodies are not readily accessible as they are buried just beneath the surface and it takes a bit of work to pull them out. There is an experimental dissonance at work here that is not easily accessible but is well worth the effort in the end. All three musicians work beautifully together intertwining compositional form and improvisation seemingly at will. Eckemoff’s edgy piano textures weave around the outstanding rhythm play of Erskine and Vinding and all three excel in the free form jazz style.

With song titles like “Freezing Point”, “Snow Bliss” and “Winter” it is not hard to imagine a theme of winter which somehow seems fitting for a Russian born musician. The album begins with the title track, a mournful number with a somber edge with lovely piano displaying a gentle touch and a fat bass sound. This is jazz with an eclectic edge but with no less charm. “After Blizzard” features stark piano, a subtle bass groove and washes of percussion invoking the calm after the storm before turning in an experimental direction, especially Erskine’s improvisational drum work. The eclectic jazz of “Stubborn” is a wild ride of pure dissonance where deliberate bass lines and wonderful piano fills intertwine forming a cacophony of conflicting sounds. The album takes on a gentler approach with the compositional balladry of “Romance by the Fireplace” and “White Magic” before ending with the thirteen minute long “Winter” featuring marching style drums and intense piano work.

Eckemoff and company have produced an excellent album with Cold Sun. Fans of eclectic acoustic jazz will eat this one up, I guarantee it.

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Chris Spector for Midwest Record

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There’s ECM music lingering beyond the ECM gates. Perhaps the bleakest picture of winter since “Reds”, this Russian composer paints her impressionistic portrait as only one afraid of being sent to Siberia can do. A first rate piece of modern, chamber jazz for the sitting down jazz lover.

Frank-John Hadley for Downbeat

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If Eckemoff demonstrates anything with this enthralling winter-themed album, it lies in her artistry as an inquisitive, slow-paced, and free-of-sentimentality pianist able to express special emotional qualities linked to song titles like “After Blizzard,” “Romance by the Fireplace,” and “Snow Bliss.”  Excellent simpatico support from drummer Peter Erskine and double-bass player Mads Vinding.

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