All About Jazz

Doug Collette for All About Jazz

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(Multiple Reviews)

Title: Yelena Eckemoff And Cory Smythe: Imagination Unbound

Yelena Eckemoff and Cory Smythe have configured mirror images in music that reflect global mindsets of race, gender and class in the wake of COVID lockdowns and in the midst of climate change (among other controversies). The former postulates an insular existence populated only by a single individual and a sole figure with whom he finds empathy, while the latter formulates a world vision from a single point of view scanning the boundaries of culture(s). In keeping with the various perceptions arising from the main characters in their dramatic narratives, layered arrangements featuring an often exotic variety of instruments illustrate in great detail the challenges of contemporary existence(s). Eckemoff and Smythe have thus depicted worlds in constant change, but also proffered some tangible comfort in the sounds of their songs, while at the same time proffering an implicit bond between listeners of these imaginative works and the musicians who’ve brought the material to life.

The beauty of pianist/composer Eckemoff’s ambitious work here is that the carefully-crafted, multi-leveled concept never impinges upon the flow of the musicianship. Quite the contrary, as the arrangements not only further the colorful narrative (chapters of which consist of prose and paintings in the accompanying thirty-two page booklet), but also demonstrate how such detailed charts, in the right hands, replicate the open-ended spontaneity of improvisation. Toward that end too, the variety of instruments—various Japanese flutes by Masaru Koga, electric and acoustic bass plus multiple keyboards from the composer/bandleader—provide as much backdrop as pertinent detail to the unfolding storyline: the familiar sound of Kirk Knuffke’s cornet (almost) offsets the oddity of certain tones and textures that permeate an environmental maelstrom no longer as familiar as it used to be prior to marked change. A near-perfect clarity and balance of recorded sound pervades the ninety-some minutes on two CDs, a logical reflection of this artist’s overall creative lucidity.

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Dan McClenaghan for All About Jazz

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A Moscow-raised, classically-trained pianist, Yelena Eckemoff made the move to the United States in 1991, after being bitten by the jazz bug via a Dave Brubeck concert she attended in Moscow in 1987. In 2010, after settling with her family in rural North Carolina, she released Cold Sun (L & H Records), a trio outing featuring bassist Mads Vinding and drummer Peter Erskine. She followed up this fine debut with several more albums, all on her L & H Label, teaming again with drummer Erskine, bassist Arild Andersen, drummers Marilyn Mazur and Billy Hart, saxophonist Mark Turner and vibraphonist Joe Locke.

So, how does a young mother from Moscow, settled in rural North Carolina, unknown in the jazz world, connect with and eventually employ such a top-of-the-line list of jazz players to help her present her artistic vision? The guess here, formed after a phone conversation with the artist, a fearless directness combined with a guileless personal approach, a bit of friendly, low-key audacity, unwavering determination, and a justified confidence in the quality of the art she is creating.

2015 was a breakout year for Eckemoff. Two of her finest albums, Lionsand Everblue, both on L & H Records, came out that year—two all-star ensembles showcasing Eckemoff’s superior compositions and her themed approach to making albums. She continues in that tradition on Lonely Man And His Fish, music built around Eckemoff’s story about a retired orchestral trumpeter player (the lonely man) and his retirement present pet fish, Spark.

Trumpeter Kirk Knuffke plays the lonely man part; Japanese flautist Masaru Koga supplies the voice of Spark. The story, included in the liner booklet, has the feel of a simple children’s tale. Much of the music has a whimsical quality, with engaging melodies and complex, classical-like harmonies. Trumpeter Knuffke sounds quintessentially American, drawing from funk and New Orleans traditions; flautist Koga brings in the Eastern tinge, and the rhythm section—Eckemoff, bassist Ben Street and drummer Eric Harland—are impeccable and imaginative in their support and their embellishments to the story-telling.

The 2 CDs worth of music on Lonely Man And His Fish brims with joy and the exhilaration of creation. Eckemoff’s theme-based offerings take another step forward in complexity and positivity. What might be next for the pianist-composer? It is impossible to say; she follows her muse from pride of lions to nocturnal animals, from colors to wildflowers, from the desert to blooming tall phloxes—inspirations from unlikely places transformed into marvelous works of art.

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Mark Sullivan for All About Jazz

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Composer and pianist Yelena Eckemoff’s Colors (L&H Production, 2019) was a duet with drummer Manu Katche, a unique instrumentation in her ever-growing list of works. His contributions were so singular that when she had an opportunity to celebrate the album release by playing the music live at KITO in Bremen, Germany in 2019, and he could not make the gig, she opted to play solo rather than hire another drummer. It was the first time in about 15 years that she took the stage as a piano soloist, because she stopped performing as a classical concert pianist after starting her jazz journey.

For this live performance, she kept the track order of the original album, because the story behind the album represented colors as stages of life, from birth (white) to death (black). Not having a drummer keeping time, she played more freely, focusing on nuances of the phrasing. The chosen tempos were quite different (often faster) to when playing with Katché. Despite this, the lengths of the pieces were close to the recordings for the most part, which probably illustrates the strength of the compositional structures.

The opener “White” is an exception to this rule, running a little over half the length of the recording. Much of the time difference can be explained by the pacing. The duet version featured call-and-response, with the theme introduced after some preparation. The solo version launches into the theme almost immediately, and Eckemoff’s playing is loose and rhapsodic. While recognizable as the same composition, the solo treatment casts a new light on it.

“Orange” maintains its blues feeling from the original, as does “Green.” “Blue” is another track which is rendered in a more compact form as a piano solo, but here the form defines the music, producing a version close to the original. So it continues through the finale, “Black,” in which Eckemoff concludes the spectrum in a reflective mood, although thankfully not as gloomy as the color theme implies. The original duet performance spotlighted Eckemoff as both pianist and composer; this solo version does so even more strongly. It is a worthy addition to her discography, sure to interest any fans of her work.

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Dan McClenaghan for All About Jazz

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The seeds of pianist-composer Yelena Eckemoff’s Adventures Of The Wildflower were planted in 2013, when she traveled to Hollola, Finland, to record Blooming Tall Phlox (L&H Productions, 2017) with a group of young Finnish musicians. Several Eckemoff albums came about after that recording, but the experience with her Finnish friends must have exerted a sort of gravitational pull, and in 2019 she made a return trip to the country to team with vibraphonist Panu Savolainen, bassist Antti Lotjonen and drummer Olavi Louhivuori —who had all participated in Blooming Tall Phlox—and newcomers to her world, multi-instrumentalist Jarmo Saari (guitars, theremin, glass harp) and saxophonist Jukka Perko, who took trumpeter Verneri Pohjola‘s ‘horn” spot in the ensemble.

Eckemoff does concept albums: Lions (2015), Colors (2017), Desert (2018), all on L&H Productions. It is more of the same with The Adventures Of The Wildflower, a deep exploration of the journey of a Columbine flower from babyhood to maturity, as she (note the anthropomorphization) observes the natural world surrounding her. A fanciful idea, perhaps, but not without artistic forerunners—the concept of the potential for plant sentience has been artistically explored on Stevie Wonder‘s soundtrack album Journey Through “The Secret Life Of Plants” (Tamla, 1979), and with science fiction novelist Gregory Bendford’s speculative Marsmat, an algae-like growth on the planet Mars that could communicate, planet-wide, with its fellow “Mats.” This in his novels Martian Race (1999) and The Sunborn (2005).

The two disc set begins distinctively, with the eerie wavering of a theremin rising above the ensemble sound. To those hanging out at the shore and grooving to the Beach Boys in 1966—or for anyone else in that timeframe with access to a radio—the theremin was instrumental (hah!) in the success of the Beach Boys’ song “Good Vibrations,” the group’s third number one hit single. Its eerie, space-age warble sounds like cosmic rays, or a death beam from an attacking UFO, 1950s sci-fi B movie style. Something of a gimmick then, but not so for Eckemoff, or from Jarmo Saari, who incorporates that sound to the mix with a deft hand. And, in part, this new sound, used texturally and sparingly inside Eckemoff’s well-shaped arrangements, is a part of what sets Adventures Of The Wildflower above the pianist’s earlier work, as does Saari’s guitar and glass harp, Panu Savolainen‘s luminous vibraphone, Jukka Perko‘s understated but always tasty soprano and tenor sax contributions, combined with the subtle ensemble acumen of drummer Olavi Louhivuori and bassist Antti Lotjonen. Add to this Eckemoff’s growth and freedom as a composer/arranger.

The eighteen Eckemoff compositions here are some of her most abstract and sometimes asymmetrical (but beautiful) offerings—consider the Columbine flower that boasts a delicate and lovely symmetry; the wild plant from which it blossoms that does not. Taken as a whole, the two disc, two hour set creates intricately placid, mysterious and modernistically spiritual feeling—a chamber jazz from a mid-twenty first century church. It is sometimes playful, and could, at times, fit into the “exotica” category of sounds—an exotica influenced, Henry David Thoreau-like, by the everyday goings on in the confines of the church of Yelena Eckemoff’s backyard, in tunes entitled “Germination,” “Dog Chasing A Squirrel,” “Chickens,” (yes, her chickens get some glory here, says Eckemoff, with a twinkling eye and a merry laugh), “Butterflies” and “Children Playing With Seed Pods.” Things that could be considered mundane, if the artist in Eckemoff hadn’t revealed though her complex and unconventionally beautiful music, her sounds full of joy and wonder, that they are not.

Eckemoff includes in the album packaging her poems and her paintings, following the Columbine plant’s life journey—an effort worthy of a children’s (or an adult’s) book.

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Mark Sullivan for All About Jazz

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Pianist-composer Yelena Eckemoff is predictably unpredictable. After an early series of piano trio albums she worked with larger ensembles, culminating in the sextet (plus vocalists) of Better Than Gold And Silver (L&H, 2018). After cutting back to a duet with drummer Manu Katche on Colors (L&H, 2019) she returns with a larger band, but with a difference; this is a quartet with double bassist Arild Andersen (her longest collaborator), and drummer/percussionists Jon Christensen and Thomas Strønen.

It may look like a piano trio plus a second drummer but, in practice, it is more like a piano & double-bass duet plus a drum duet. Andersen is often found as a lead instrument or playing counter-melodies, in addition to traditional bass duties. As usual Eckemoff has a unifying theme—reflected in her paintings and the poems which accompany each track—in this case nocturnal animals. The animals active at night are a varied lot, ranging from the fox depicted in Eckemoff’s cover painting to cicadas, owls, bats…even scorpions and fireflies.

“Cicada” opens the set with a calm evening vibe, including a lyrical double bass solo. “Fox” has a swing feel which is rare in Eckemoff’s music, extending to Thelonious Monk-like blues flavor. “Rattlesnake” is played rubato, with especially free percussion. This is the closest the percussionists come to a solo, distinguishing themselves instead by their empathetic interaction as accompanists. “Toad” opens with a rubato double bass solo, then the piano introduces a sprawling theme, gradually morphing into piano and double bass solos. The bass plays the theme again to close, the entire track demonstrating how central Andersen is to the group sound.

“Lynx” returns to a more direct rhythm, in contrast to the frequently rubato feel of the album. “Sea Turtle” closes the program, placing the recurring theme between bass and piano, while also demonstrating Eckemoff’s sectional compositional style. It includes a spotlighted bass solo with only percussion at first, and concludes with a rhapsodic restatement of the theme, Eckemoff’s piano echoing the Romantic composing style of Liszt or Rachmaninoff.

Given the all-star ensembles frequently found on Eckemoff’s albums, a listener could be forgiven for wondering “who’s the pianist?” This album and the previous duet recording both place Eckemoff the pianist on the same plane as Eckemoff the composer, proof that the two sides of her musical life are closer together than they appear. Nocturnal Animals presents a unique perspective on both.

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Dan McClenaghan for All About Jazz

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“You’re busy appearing or you’re busy disappearing.” Drummer-bandleader Art Blakey may have said that; if he didn’t, he should have. Somebody had to express the importance of presenting your work, for getting it out there to an audience. This goes for virtually any artist in any medium. Double down on that for people who create jazz.

Pianist Yelena Eckemoff rolls with the “busy appearing” concept. She is prolific; since her debut recording , Cold Sun (L & H, 2010), she has released fourteen more albums, employing some of the finest sidemen the world of jazz has to offer: drummers Peter Erskine and Manu Katche, bassists Arild Andersen and Mads Vinding, saxophonist Tore Brunborg and more. The names of her accomplices suggest an ECM Records aesthetic, accurately. Eckemoff pens complex tunes which reflect her classical training and, at the same time, seem to have a feeling of a folk music direction. In terms of recording studios, she is no stranger to Scandinavia—ECM Records’ oft times stomping ground—Oslo’s Rainbow Studios, and Petrex Studio in Finland, giving credence to the comparison to Manfred Eicher‘s label.

Nocturnal Animals, another in a string of albums built around a thematic concept, is a double disc featuring bassist Arild Andersen once more, and two drummers who have often recorded under the ECM banner: Jon Christensen and Thomas Strønen. The sound they create alongside Eckemoff is subtle, shimmering, translucently gorgeous, featuring Eckemoff displaying her most delicate touch. Bassist Andersen is typically muscular—the backbone of the band—while drummers Christensen and Stronen weave and counter-weave backdrops of diaphanous fabric—a tapestry of spider webs.

Theme wise, Eckemoff searches the souls of the animals of the night: “Lynx,” “Owl,” “Hedgehog,” Grizzly Bear,” “Wolf,” “Rattlesnake.” The album cover features one of her paintings, with a fox backlit to a surreal luminescence by a weak (perhaps mid-winter) setting sun. The included pamphlet features poems she wrote for each composition. She does create a complete and compelling work of art.

Yelena Ecemoff has come a long way from her native Moscow, which she left in 1991. Through her boundless ambition, determination and expansive talent, she has turned herself into a major jazz artist with a consistently outstanding discography which includes Lions (2014), Everblue (2014), Desert (2015)…and Nocturnal Animals, all on her own L & H Records label.

Mark Sullivan for All About Jazz

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Pianist/composer Yelena Eckemoff has produced a varied discography. But since her piano trio album Lions (L&H Production, 2015) she has tended towards larger ensembles. Leaving Everything Behind (L&H, 2016) and Desert (L&H, 2018) were both quartets; Blooming Tall Phlox(L&H, 2017) and In the Shadow of a Cloud (L&H, 2017) were quintets; and Better Than Gold And Silver (L&H, 2018) was a sextet (plus two vocalists for the vocal versions). So this is a surprising move: a duet with drummer Manu Katche, a new collaborator, and the only one in her discography given co-billing credit. 

As always the album has a theme: in this case it is colors, with each track is assigned a title with a different hue. As the accompanying poems make clear, for Eckemoff colors have associations with specific life events, ranging chronologically from childbirth (white) to childhood (orange) to pregnancy (blue) to adulthood (red) to old age (grey). While composition is her main focus, the sparse instrumentation unavoidably focuses on her piano playing. Recent projects have had such an all-star atmosphere that listeners could be forgiven for checking the credits find out who is playing the piano. If nothing else this album re-establishes Eckemoff’s central role as pianist as well as composer. 

“White” is a gentle opener, impressionistic piano accompanied by brushes and light cymbals. “Orange” heats up with bluesy piano and driving rock drumming, and “Green” continues the up-tempo feel (along with a section of lyrical introspection). The duo achieves a full sound: Eckemoff’s piano writing includes enough bass register to fill that function when necessary, and Katché can sound like a whole percussion section (“Violet” is a good example of this). 

The long track “Blue” (which is about the calmness of blue lake and sky, not the sadness the color might suggest) is a good example of the sectional, through-composed compositions often essayed by her group projects. Here it is just the two players presenting a series of mostly contemplative moods, with a couple of recurring contrasting sprightly sections. “Grey” is a rubato rumination on old age, solo piano for the first third before light percussion joins in. Closer “Black” evokes only the darkness of night and sleep, a gentle meditation that comes full circle to the new day in the accompanying poem. 

Colors is an exceptional addition to Yelena Eckemoff’s discography, and a very clear picture of her compositional and pianistic talents, with everything extraneous stripped away. Manu Katché’s contribution bears the hallmarks of his style: tonal color, invention, and his inimitable groove. It is not surprising that Eckemoff has opted to play live shows supporting the release solo, rather than use another drummer.

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Dan McClenaghan for All About Jazz

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Pianist Yelena Eckemoff brings the top drummers into her recording sessions, whether it’s Billy Hart on Lions (2014), or Peter Erskine on Glass Song (2012) and Desert (2015), or Jon Christensen for Everblue (2014)—all of these on her own L & H Production label. 

The year 2019 finds the prolific Eckemoff presenting her first duo album, Colors, a piano and drums affair with another topline partner sitting at the kit: Manu Katche, a distinctive drumming stylist and a leader in his own right, with eight releases to his name, five of them on ECM Records. 

Colors could just as well been called Life, a panoramic set of Eckemoff originals that affixes different colors to life’s stages, from “White,” an examination of birth’s blank slate, to “Orange,” a celebration of youthful energy, through “Violet,” a nod to the thrill of first love, to “Black,” a facing, with equanimity, of death’s mysterious void. 

Eckemoff’s music is often complex and cerebral, drawing on her classical studies in her native Russia, and it frequently leans toward the reflective and inward. This is especially true of her early recordings, like Cold Sun (L & H, 2010) and the previously mentioned Glass Song. But with the release of Lions her sound seemed to draw as much from the heart and gut as it did from the head; the energy of life seemed to swim in tandem beside the reveries of the mind. Colors presents that mix to perfection. 

Eckemoff’s piano sound is, as always, crisp and clean of touch, intricate and nuanced and complex. It can sound a bit playful, full of wordless wonder (“White”); and it can portray an expanding consciousness with an inward tilt (“Pink”), and it can ROCK OUT, big time, with Eckemoff and Katche digging-deep into a relentless groove on “Orange.” Is it Eckemoff prodding and exhorting Katche, or is it Katche elbowing Eckemoff; or is it a balanced pairing, a two way call and response bubbling with the electricity of life? Probably the last choice, given a listen to “Indigo,” another animated, jazz-rock, groove-centric sound. 

Not that moments of reflections aren’t present. “Violet,” concerning “the thrill of first love” is a reflective interlude of subtle beauty; and “Blue” begins as a lyrical, inward rumination that shifts, two minutes in, into a playful prance that swells to a tempest that then tapers down to tranquility, rolling then to a re-start of the cycle. And “Red” seems to dance with the vibrancy and sassiness and confidence of an attractive woman in her prime (imagery taken from Eckemoff’s accompanying poem in the cover booklet). 

Colors covers a wide range of moods and styles, a mode of operation that can reveal weaknesses in a thematic cohesion. That Eckemoff and Kache avoid this potential hazard over a fourteen song, near-eighty minute set is remarkable. 

One of Yelena Eckemoff’s finest recordings.

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Mark Sullivan for All About Jazz

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Russian-born pianist/composer Yelena Eckemoff began setting verses from the Bible’s Book of Psalms shortly after her conversion to Catholicism, even before her emigration to the United States. But she waited until she had considerable experience working with jazz musicians before attempting these jazz arrangements. The first disc in this double disc set presents settings with two vocalists, tenor Tomas Cruzand mezzo-soprano Kim Mayo, accompanied by a remarkable band: trumpeter Ralph Alessi, guitarist Ben Monder, violinist Christian Howes, bassist Drew Gress and drummer Joey Baron (plus the composer on piano). The second disc is devoted to instrumental versions, with soloists taking the vocal lines. 

The album title is a paraphrase of a line in Psalm 119, the longest psalm set here. The full text includes 22 verses, one for each letter in the Hebrew alphabet: the five verses Eckemoff set form half of the album’s ten tracks. But it is Cruz’s sweet tenor singing “Psalm 131” that opens the set with a ballad feel, supported by Howes’ violin obbligato and sensitive guitar, violin and trumpet solos. Mayo’s clear mezzo soprano gets support from Alessi’s trumpet obbligato on “Psalm 119 Teth,” the first of the Psalm 119 settings. 

Eckemoff’s jazz compositions have always been notable for their through-composed qualities. They rarely follow the conventional head-solos-head structure of jazz performance, employing sectional structures that are unique to each piece. That quality is even more pronounced here, as she sets the Psalms word-for-word: the music adapts to the rhythm of the words, not the other way around. Recognizing that there needs to be space for improvisation, sometimes there is a contrasting section devoted to soloists, for example the Latin feel that emerges during the middle of “Psalm 110.” There is still space for swing, as in “Psalm 119 Lamed,” where the same gentle swing groove supports vocals from both Mayo and Cruz, as well as trumpet and piano solos. Closer “Psalm 147” (the longest track by far at over twelve minutes) includes instrumental interludes between the sung verses, music that elaborates upon the accompaniment patterns. 

The instrumental disk presents the same songs in the same order, with instruments carrying the vocal lines, and with different, more open solos. The instrumental versions are not dramatically different—not least because they were recorded in the same sessions as the vocal ones, with the vocals added later—but they do prove that Eckemoff’s compositions can stand up quite well without the words. The first couple of vocal parts fall to Alessi’s trumpet, a warm expressive voice. Then Howes’ violin takes the next two, a comfortable choice for what are essentially art songs. The two alternate the vocal role for most of the set, but bassist Gress expands his introduction to “Psalm 126” on the vocal disk into a full-throated statement of the theme. The end instrumental section of “Psalm 119 Jod” builds into a free section, ranging more widely than the vocal version had. 

Eckemoff rightly considers this music to be modern jazz, not liturgical music. It takes its place alongside Duke Ellington’s Sacred Concerts (Prestige Records, 1968) and Steve Reich’s Tehillim (ECM New Series, 2000) (which presents his minimalist interpretation of the psalms). It also represents yet another new color in the rainbow of her recording projects, each different from the last.

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C. Michael Bailey for All About Jazz

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Sacred music comes in many forms and from many inspirations. Historically, it has always been a cornerstone of our shared musical story. Regardless of one’s conviction, this tradition is a part of us and will continue to be. Russian composer and pianist Yelena Eckemoff was an atheist in the former Soviet Union before coming to the United States seeking material, cultural, and spiritual freedom. The latter she found in Christianity, first through the Russian Orthodox text and then the King James Bible, from where she takes her settings of selected Psalms. Eckemoff breaks up the lengthy Psalm 119, dispersing it among Psalms 58, 110, 126, 131, and 147. The composer has divided her project over two CDs, one with vocals, and the second, instrumental only. She employs the tenor voice of Tomas Cruz and mezzo soprano Kim Mayo, who solo and duet throughout. Her band is stellar, including: trumpeter Ralph Alessi, guitarist Ben Monder, violinist Christian Howes, bassist Drew Gress and drummer Joey Baron. The music is sublimely introspective with an angular trajectory and evolution. Quietly contemplative and deeply moving. 

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