Glass Song

Dan Bilawsky for All About Jazz

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Pianist Yelena Eckemoff got a late start as a full-fledged jazz recording artist but she’s making up for lost time. Eckemoff entered the artistic world as a young classical pianist in the Soviet Union, but she chose to put her work on hold for a spell while raising her children. Eventually, she returned to the piano with renewed creativity energy, but only after leaving her native land. In order to make the move, Eckemoff and her husband had to temporarily leave their three children behind, which was a difficult and gut wrenching decision, but all worked out in the end and her relocation to the United States gave her a new personal and artistic lease on life.

Eckemoff has been living stateside with her family for over two decades now, and she’s recorded more than a dozen albums in various styles and contexts during that time, but it took a while for her to develop an outward identity as a jazz pianist. Cold Sun (L&H, 2009), which was her first recorded meeting with drumming icon Peter Erskine and her first proper trio album, proved to be the major turning point in her jazz career. While she had recorded in jazz settings prior to that album, and had used a trio-plus-guest format on at least one of those occasions, she truly found her voice with this specific eternal triangle formula.

From that point on, Eckemoff churned out compelling and focused jazz albums at an astounding pace; she recorded and released four more piano trio records in less than four years. While she never retains the same trio for more than a single record, certain musicians, like Erskine and bassist Mads Vinding, pop up on more than one occasion and certain ideals come to the surface time and time again in her work. Themes of nature, sounds of isolation, stark settings, and blurred lines between compositional and improvisational elements are visible on all of Eckemoff’s trio dates, but no two records sound exactly the same.

For Glass Song, she reenlisted Erskine and brought bassist Arild Andersen into the fold for the first time. Surprisingly, neither veteran had ever recorded together, but you would never know it. Eckemoff, Andersen and Erskine create music that’s focused, yet free floating, and open, yet never nebulous. Pure melody is of less importance than the greater narrative in each number, but the music still sings out with melodic grace.

Erskine’s identity as a swing drummer or fusion force is suppressed here, as he prefers to use the drums as an instrument of extreme refinement and minimalism. “Dripping Icicles” is the only number that finds him doing a patented jazz ride pattern. Elsewhere, he treats the drums like an equal partner in a chamber music setting. Andersen is out front more often than any bassist on Eckemoff’s other recent releases and his foreground appearance(s) change the trio dynamic that existed on her earlier outings. While he occasionally delivers a no-mistaking-it solo (“March Rain”), his bass usually serves as a guide through various scenes, rather than a scene-stealing soloist. All three musicians find balance as storytellers, team players and solo personalities.

While Manfred Eicher and his storied label have nothing to do with this record, Glass Song has that “ECM sound,” if ever it existed. Mystery, blooming musical thoughts and vaguely haunting notions are at the heart of this captivating album.

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O’s Notes for O’s Place Jazz Magazine

Pianist Yelena Eckemoff invites bassist Arilo Andersen and Peter Erskine (d, perc) to perform eleven new compositions collectively titled Glass Song. This is a peaceful yet dynamic program with lots of depth and texture. It is ethereal and relaxing as the band engulfs the listener in their musical cocoon. They border on free jazz but with very refined character.

Bob Karlovits for Pittsburgh Tribune

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“Glass Song” shows how successful trios can be in staying away from the boring threesomes that haunt lobbies and small clubs. “Glass Song” — with no reference to composer Philip — consists of 10 originals by pianist Eckemoff in a more-contemplative, sometimes-moody manner. Drummer Peter Erskine helps to provide a good sense of rhythm and percussive effect. The album has almost a chamber-like sound. On both, an individual approach to music stands out.

Delarue for Lucid Culture

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Russian-American pianist Yelena Eckemoff has made a career out of icily resonant, otherworldly themes that unwind at a glacial pace. Anyone who might hear her new album Glass Song and think “Windham Hill” isn’t listening closely enough. As brooding mood pieces go, this is just about as good as it gets: that the album’s catchiest and most upbeat track is titled Elegy pretty much says it all. The opening track, Melting Ice is characteristic. It begins so imperceptibly it’s almost unnoticeable, and then Eckemoff immediately engages Arild Andersen’s bass in a slow, prophetic conversation before the thaw sets in and the blues makes its way in through the cracks. Then they do it again, and again. What emerges is an uneasy blend of morose Satie-esque chromatics and casually bluesy tonalities.

The title track is even slower and more minimalist, Andersen’s wispy, keening overtones and tersely swooping accents mingling with the glimmer behind him as Eckemoff builds to a distantly imploring ambience that reminds of the Joy Division classic The Eternal. Throughout the album, drummer Peter Erskine adds the subtlest shades of grey, and occasional swashes of black. As any drummer will tell you, music this slow and spare can be murder to play. Here he introduces a whispered clave beat in the last place where you would expect to find anything tropical – and it works like a charm.

Cloud Break, laced with more of those deliciously creepy chromatics, follows a similar path out of a slow, suspenseful shuffle that Eckemoff ornaments with Lynchian lounge-isms as the bass and drums work hypnotic polyrhythms. Polarity grows from minimalistic otherworodly bass/piano interchanges to a plaintively deliberate, syncopated sway, as close to the hint of a bounce as there is here.

Dripping Icicles is a deceptively simple, surprisingly lively noir blues livened with Erskine’s masterfully suspenseful snare and Eckemoff’s refusenik ripples, reaching tantalizingly toward a resolution that’s always just out of reach. Sweet Dreams seems to be a rather sarcastic title: the ballad is as memorably dark as everything that precedes it.

Whistle Song takes the creepiness up a couple of octaves, yet the mood never wavers. Sunny Day in the Woods is more summery, but even this is a nocturne, Eckemoff juxtaposing lingering phrases against insistent upper-register raindroplets that mingle with the bass. This long, practically hour-and-a-quarter length album ends where it began with March Rain, which keeps the pace going, but with the bass rather than the piano, which remains mostly in a distant, desolate, reserved seat in the shadows. Although marketed as jazz – which this certainly could be called- another crowd this should resonate mightily with is fans of indie classical composers like Michael Gordon and Kirsten Broberg.

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