Beyond Your Radio

Of Sound Minds 2026 Episode 02 Has No One Heard This

An oasis in the heart of Stockholm. An inspiration. Um, kind of enjoyable, sustainable living place. For more than 30 years, Rosendals Garden Foundation has cultivated and spread biodynamic farming practices, and has been a driver of the farm-to-fork concept. The renowned cafe, restaurant, wood-fired stone oven bakery, and, and the farm shop are, are focused, and it kind of highlights the beauty of that place that I have never been. A variety of flavors of locally produced organic ingredients, including vegetables, fruits, flowers, honey. You explore the orchard that boasts over 50 different varieties of apples. The rose garden, preschool, you know, for greenhouse and teaching people. They got a vineyard, all kinds of stuff, a garden center, and of course there’s gardens, and there’s places to sit and to ponder all of this. This is a place of character. This is a place of worth that has nothing to do with money. This is a place where there is earth and life and the continuance of it, the continuity. The continuity of it, the abundance that comes from it, is a historical piece that’s understood and used cultivation. Cultivation is at the very heart of what I’m talking about.

Cultivation at the very heart of this particular artist, Yelena Eckemoff. The kind of cultivation that’s being put forth in music. This is a woman who is professionally trained, who understanding, and believing in all that music holds, and all the roots of music. But this person is not driven to just hold those roots and treat them like an archeological dig, and set them in a frame and watch, or to use it, uh, in the same vein. The art is the art, but what you do with it, how you treat it, how you cultivate it, express it, it’s being done here. It’s being done here in 2026. At the hands of a Russian American, a naturalist in what it’s meant to not put it in a museum and leave it there.

Before I get to this individual, I’ll let you know that the percussion on this record is sort of, like, done in a classic jazz drum, but then in beyond it. Percussion happens not only in the drum, but in something else. I don’t know what it is, but it sounds different. That’s Morgan Ågren. Uh, it’s earthy, but way more unpredictable. Uh, kind of a reality, and it’s just wonderfully subdued and generous where it needs to be, like a garden. Svante Henryson, he is somehow swapping acoustic and electric bass, and doing cello. Cultivating the tool of a cello in this setting is just a new way of cultivating the soil, cultivating the music, and the cello has become a, a large staple in a lot more than just what I’m about to talk about. It’s been in metal. It’s kind of like the bow that is just nearly digging, bending between jazz and contemporary classical ensemble. This is symphonic jazz. No, it’s not, because there’s only three people. There’s no symphony. But it sounds like there is. It’s just immense.

This is Yelena Eckemoff, and her album, ‘Rosendals Garden’. This is jazz pianist who is a cultivator of using what she’s been taught and told and shown, but putting it into a deeply, deeply immersive, romantic, visual and stunning record. Um, the first song… And, and I hate ABBA, all right? But that, in actuality is the first track, although it is not an ABBA song. It’s just called ABBA Museum. [upbeat jazz music] This album is two sets. It’s an hour and 28 minutes. It is gorgeous. It is so modern, yet so grounded. It’s so alive, yet it’s so attached to the ear. There’s no avant-garde here that goes batshit crazy and, uh, every note speaks. I don’t know how, but it’s, it’s detailed, it’s categorically contained and it just, yet it seems free. You know? I find the album to be one of the best of 2026.

This is not her first rodeo. She’s got I think a dozen releases. And I was looking at jazz, and I was saying, “Who has a catalog like that, that, that has an immensity to it that I’ve never, ever heard of this individual?” But not only that, this came from a place that sends me metal, that sends me dark harbingers of sorrow, that sends me into- [laughs] … the darkest pits of, uh, grindcore and hardcore. But they sent me this. But this is on their radar. This is something they’re helping get this out there. The record is an absolute masterpiece, and I got a feeling she’s got a dozen more [laughs] I’m going to go back to. They all seem to settle around places or, you know, nature. I think it’s more about the land, the earth, the city, places I don’t belong, you know, or what she sees or, and all this. It is a magical piece. If you love classical music, but you’re sick and tired of hearing Bach and Chopin all the time done by other people, this is a woman who’s showcasing Chopin. But there, there’s no Chopin in her music, it’s just her and what she’s taken from it, and it’s in a jazz format with, with the three of them, and it’s beautifully composed. Uh, and it is improv to some degree. It feels like it, it acts like it, although it’s calculated to some degree. This is… I, I just can’t express how this piece, um, has changed my outlook on life. This is just something different. Um, yet it’s familiar, yet it’s grounded in, in this position that I’m talking about. Yeah. So, an hour and 28 minutes is not your norm, uh, in this. You know, a metal marketing company sent me this jazz record, a beautiful, wonderful jazz record, because they know, they understand music, even though- Oh, you would listen … they love growling torture. [laughs] And they understand that there’s something in this record for everybody.