Carol Banks Weber

Carol Banks Weber for AXS

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Title: Yelena Eckemoff’s ‘Blooming Tall Phlox’ replays childhood memories

In a way, Yelena Eckemoff has spent her entire life breathing “in the happiness” of her childhood. Originally from the poem, “Scented candles and sparkling wine,” accompanying her latest album, this sentiment emboldens the Russian pianist and composer’s original works of art — of which there are many.

A prolific artist with a million ideas, Eckemoff follows up her May 2016 release, Leaving Everything Behind, with Blooming Tall Phlox. She actually worked on Blooming Tall Phlox earlier, recording the two-disk album in Finland Sept. 4-6, 2013 — two years before Leaving Everything Behind, currently on DownBeat’s “Best Albums of 2016.”

Both albums directly touch on her childhood in Russia, surrounded by a loving, extended family, the source of all her imaginative understanding.

In Blooming Tall Phlox (L&H Production), which comes out Jan. 20 officially, Eckemoff once again uses other media at her disposal and her discretion to bring her childhood to life. True to her classical-jazz impressionism, Eckemoff sees humanity in nature and objects of man-made construction.

Memories are found there, and she knows it.

Blooming Tall Phlox features an assortment of memories divided into two distinct categories based on the seasons of summer and winter. She devotes a foreign indie soundtrack to such things as “Apples laid out on the floor,” “Fish fried on open fire,” “Pine Needles warmed by the sun” — Disc 1 “Summer Smells” — and “Grandpa Lera’s bookcase,” “Mommy’s shawl,” and “Aunt Galya’s perfume” — Disc 2 “Winter Smells.”

For this extensive two-disk, 15-track album, Eckemoff plays with a group of musicians from overseas, Finland to be exact. They are Verneri Pohjola (trumpet, flugelhorn), Panu Savolainen (vibes), Antti Lötjönen (double bass), and Olavi Louhivuori (drums, percussion).

If music held the key to the spirits of loved ones, somehow Eckemoff has found a form of two-way communication. As in previous releases, she designed the album, she painted the cover of herself as a child amongst her beloved phlox, and she wrote the poems that glimpse even more of the feeling and thought behind the notes.

The love notes themselves are vastly detailed, yet dreamy, dense yet ethereal, reflective yet enlightening, confident yet full of give and take — traits Eckemoff shares.

This is an album to absorb in its entirety, from start to finish, with frequent browsing of the poetry and the art, a brief rumination of one’s own childhood memories and the possessions left behind.

Individual moments also convey a sense of nostalgia, longing, even a mystical wonder. The fairy dust of Eckemoff’s own piano intro on “Blooming Tall Phlox,” the percussive flap and flutter mimicking “Baba Liza’s Singer” sewing machine, the slick sensation of a horn’s tension and release on “Talks Over Hot Tea”… these things depict a child’s wonder at the everyday things adults take for granted.

To a child, there is still magic in the air, in everything she and those she holds dear touch.

Eckemoff’s modern jazz touches remain impressive, however. This is no atmospheric run, as evidenced strongly in “Apples laid out on the floor.” Everyone on this straight-ahead, post-modern piece exhibits a tactile sensation relevant to jazz’s harmonic building blocks and that sweet exchange of instrumental titles.

Eckemoff herself shows a mastery of both her classical training and later jazz interests in this composition especially. Her inflective, interior piano journey on “Apples laid out…” stands alone, no accompaniment necessary. The accompanying musicians, however, only add to the benefit of the overarching ideas of sensory perception in memories idealized through childhood.

They capture those idealized memories from sense of smell to music entirely. Don’t look for rough-hewn, nihilistic realism here. Eckemoff’s above that.

Yelena Eckemoff is a bandleader who uses every single resource exceptionally. Nothing ever goes to waste in her hands, either.

“I had the idea of writing music about smell for some time before I met with [drummer] Olavi [Louhivuori] in Finland,” Eckemoff explained in a DL Media press release. “The idea came into focus when I saw how much Finland reminded me of Russia; it became obvious to me that it would be the best place to record an album about various aromas. I brought 15 songs to the session, already named and designed to express certain smells. Writing the poetry came later, even though I nurtured my ideas along with the music. Then I had to select a title for the album, but as I was writing my poems, it became clear that there is one smell that triggers my childhood memories: the smell of the phlox. So I decided to paint a picture of myself in my grandparent’s garden, sniffing the phlox, based on a black and white photograph from the time.”

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Carol Banks Weber for AXS – new music preview

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Russian classical pianist and composer Yelena Eckemoff infuses more of her modern sense of jazz on yet another winning, personal reflection, set to music and art — all hers. Blooming Tall Phlox is what she most remembers and cherishes of her childhood with loving grandparents back in her homeland of Russia, before the conflicts that were beyond her and before the heartbreaking separation of her family during the time she and her husband left for the U.S. to make a better life. Scheduled for release Jan. 20, 2017 on her L&H Production, the two-part double-album is the prolific artist’s 10th jazz venture.

“I had the idea of writing music about smell for some time before I met with [drummer] Olavi [Louhivuori] in Finland,” Eckemoff explained in a DL Media release. “The idea came into focus when I saw how much Finland reminded me of Russia; it became obvious to me that it would be the best place to record an album about various aromas. I brought 15 songs to the session, already named and designed to express certain smells. Writing the poetry came later, even though I nurtured my ideas along with the music. Then I had to select a title for the album, but as I was writing my poems, it became clear that there is one smell that triggers my childhood memories: the smell of the phlox. So I decided to paint a picture of myself in my grandparent’s garden, sniffing the phlox, based on a black and white photograph from the time.”

Eckemoff tries to capture all of the senses through her music, artwork, and poetry, even the smell of the phlox, “Apples Laid Out On The Floor,” “Wildflower Meadows,” and “Old Fashioned Bread Store.”

She goes to some pretty crazy places to get her points across. “Talks Over Hot Tea” nearly replicates the sound of the tea kettle on the boil in the tension and release of the horns toward the end.

The horns figure heavily in the sense-memory of the music, which pushes the edgy in her take on modern jazz.

She switched up the personnel somewhat by employing young, talented musicians from Finland, musicians able to read and improvise when needed: trumpeter Verneri Pohjola, drummer Olavi Louhivuori, vibraphonist Panu Savolainen, and double bassist Antti Lötjönen.

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Carol Banks Weber for AXS

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Russian jazz-classical composer Yelena Eckemoff forces you to listen with every new album she leaves behind. Hers is an original, unusual multi-media campaign — designed solely to immerse all listeners in a world where every sense is engaged, coming alive with immeasurable empathy, and thus, understanding.

On her newest album, Leaving Everything Behind (L&H Production), Eckemoff again writes poetry for each of her 11 original compositions — most written before American modern jazz heavily altered her classical, Russian upbringing. She also contributed her own art for the occasion.

Everything adds to that full immersive effect so that you not only feel what you hear in her music, but you are there with her in the mini-stories she tells, maybe even holding her hand, going through the same emotions. The pianist holds nothing back in the music, transforming tragedy into luminous wonder. In her prose, however, she waits on her moments patiently, like that precious mushroom she writes about in the midst of leaves and fallen rain.

The subject matter deals mostly with her literally leaving everything behind, harkening back briefly to her time growing up in Moscow, visiting her grandparents in Tambov on her own personal “Love Train,” escaping the hardships and tyranny of man-made conflict for dubious freedom in America, leaving her children behind, and escaping the man-made entirely by going off into nature.

But the tone is very Russian, very stoic, noble, and full of hope. Eckemoff would not be faulted for dissolving into an emotional mess, especially with all she’s gone through. Yet, she chronicles the premature death of her sister “baby Anna” a day after childbirth, the death of her beloved, generous grandfather, her toddler “stretching his little hand, crying, ‘Mommy!,’ [her] older boys [as they] kept silent and serious, watching their parents leave…” all of it with a matter-of-fact survival mechanism to ponder over later, in her voluminous music.

She pours all of her emotions — the unspeakable grief of crushing disappointment and loss, the courage and fear involved in surviving impossible, often socio-political situations beyond her control — into the music, with three extremely empathic musicians. Violinist Mark Feldman, drummer Billy Hart, who’s appeared on her previous recordings, and double bassist Ben Street join Eckemoff on piano to flesh out what the haiku of her poetry cannot say.

There can be no other beautiful accompaniment than Feldman lyricizing a mother’s broken heart on violin, while the Moscow State Conservatory-trained classical pianist carries the dark, almost discordant march of time keeping her from her children since the day she and her husband boarded a plane for America in 1991. (It wasn’t for long. They’ve since reunited, and are happy now.)

Eckemoff’s art, poetry, and music are so indelibly entwined that it would be foolish to try to listen to this album without first looking and reading. Doing so will enhance the immersive experience until you are smiling uncontrollably, hit with an incredible urge to cry like a baby, or filled with a compulsion to go out into the nearest woods and just walk around exploring nature, preferably with Leaving Everything Behind playing on your iPod.

“Prologue” will break your heart into a million pieces. Through words and music, Eckemoff and her band weave a soundtrack for the soul, putting the listener in the exact spot she was once when her mother told her she’d soon be playing with a baby sister, juxtaposed with watching her grandfather in his workshop “selflessly putting his skillful hands to use for everyone who needed his help.”

And then, happiness crumbling before her very eyes: “A healthy girl was born one month premature, and died a day later from unknown reasons, likely due to the neglect of the medical staff, I cried for several days, not able to accept the loss…,” seeing her grandfather’s lifeless body, “his dear hands stiffly crossed on his chest, and just the soft grey hair on his sleepy head gently shifting in the drift from the window.”

The “Prologue” takes all of three minutes, reduced to a small, spare moment — as is characterized by most of these compositions — defined by Hart’s ominous percussive rumbling, cymbals softly clashing in foreboding, Feldman’s sad violin, Street’s bass serving as perhaps the immovable hand of fate, and Eckemoff running through the pages of her youth touched by pain.

When she’s not trying to capture the feeling of life, love, and loss from that dark period, without going too far astray, she’s back to her favorite topic, the link between nature within and without — ultimately, her escape, her salvation.

“Rising From Within,” “Mushroom Rain,” “Coffee & Thunderstorm,” “Spots Of Light,” “Hope Lives Eternal,” and “Ocean Of Pines” cover her fascination with nature and her place in it. She catches snippets of what it must sound like to walk on volcanic earth, hear the ocean pounding the surf, woodland animals scavenging for their next meal, the crunch of leaves and pines as the sun struggles to peek through.

But she also inserts herself into nature, letting a wild imagination loose, just as her piano notes grow from tentative to sure, wandering with a purpose in her step on “Mushroom Rain,” picking out a “beautiful King Bolete” (is that Feldman picking at his violin in response?), and then, in Eckemoff fashion, wondering and waiting for her own mushroom rain to bloom.

With all of the quartet’s instruments at play, Eckemoff gives rise to the voicing in the accompanying poem, “If I could gather enough of his patience, if I could save enough of my strength, I, too, could escape my daily grind and rise skyward, where are you, my mushroom rain?”

On top of all that, Eckemoff’s music is everything modern jazz should aspire to be: deeply musical, complex, technically apt (“Ocean Of Pines,” an eight-minute, sensory ballet of movement and feeling, is made up of waltz, rubato sections, in 4/4), exquisitely touching, and — this is her trademark — existential at the same time.

“Traditionally, jazz is about extensive improvising on what might even be a simple tune. What I’m doing is taking more charge of the outcome. I provide a comprehensive, carefully thought-through musical framework, based on the important melodic material, and share with performers my sentiments about what each piece is meant to express,” Eckemoff explained in a DL Media press release. “At the same time I leave much space in this framework for the creative reading by each band member, as well as the band as a whole. When we start playing together, each band member brings a personal interpretation of the music material, and sometimes the outcome evolves away from what was initially intended. The improvisational parts, both structured and free, add a strong element of unpredictability, and also the interplay between band members often takes the music in a new direction.”

Yelena Eckemoff and her band will take Leaving Everything Behind in new directions 6 p.m.-7:15 p.m. Thursday at New York’s Birdland. Double bassist Joe Martin and violinist Mark Feldman will join her in the CD release party. Every guest will score a free album from Eckemoff’s discography.

By Carol Banks Weber for AXS 6/3/16

AN INTERVIEW

Yelena Eckemoff worries the music on her new album might come off as emotionally overwrought. The classically trained Russian pianist and composer tends to make the listener draw his/her own conclusions from the existential, naturalistic music. But Leaving Everything Behind hit closer to home, too close for comfort.

Previous albums dealt with lions at play, fond memories of life growing up surrounded by nature and loving family in Russia, a gentle rain hitting the window, things outside Eckemoff’s control that she gently, lightly humanizes in an overall philosophical musing in instrumental form.

Leaving Everything Behind goes deeper, into a dark time when Eckemoff lost a baby sister shortly after birth, saw her beloved grandfather’s still body in his workshop, and left her children back home in Russia to find a new way of life with her husband in America. These things hurt. They leave a mark.

Eckemoff refrained from writing about this time until she could view the emotional carnage from a safe distance, enough to sound coherent, reasonable, and yet still compelling.

She also brought in avant-garde, jazz violinist Mark Feldman, a musician of such sensitivity and depth — the absolute right choice to carry her grief without taking it too far into a maudlin soap opera. The choice was also surprising, given Eckemoff’s aversion to the sound of violins, which can admittedly tend toward the very emotional manipulation she has strived to avoid in her musical career.

The entire album is the perfect balance of the head and the heart, while telling painful stories about a love that suffers losses and yearns to thrive again in the paradise of hope. Leaving Everything Behind weaves breathtaking original music with an almost spare, Japanese haiku of accompanying poetry and an impressionistic residue in the album artwork — all created by Eckemoff.

Yesterday, she gave an interview exclusively to AXS about turning her troubles into self-expression on an album that works both as a technical marvel and an emotional catharsis. She even let slip plans to make a vocal album!

AXS: What is the one thing you’d like for listeners to take away from your new album, Leaving Everything Behind?

Yelena Eckemoff: Emotional charge.

AXS: What is the one thing you’d like people to know about you, as an artist?

YE: With my art, I do not seek to amuse, nor to follow any trends; I hope to provide nourishment for the soul.

AXS: You seem to be overflowing with ideas for new albums and new songs. How do you work, in terms of recording such a prolific amount? Do you already have the next concept for an album in your head while you’re working on another one?

YE: I always have between two and four different projects simultaneously in different stages of development. I try to make progress with each of them as much as I can every day. It is hard work that keeps me vigil many a night, but I would feel purposeless and empty without it. I constantly set my goals, prioritize, and stay focused to be able to meet the deadlines. Outside of my teaching, housekeeping, and family, I spend the rest of my time working on my music productions. I have learned to be pretty efficient. It helps that I don’t travel much, so I can spare more time for my creative work.

AXS: What brought on Leaving Everything Behind? Was it too personal to delve into right away? How long in the making was this album?

YE: At least 20 years passed since my immigration before I started to feel that it would be okay to share this part of my troublesome past with my listeners. All the tunes I used were composed either in my youth or later on, after the immigration, when the nostalgia was still painfully raw.

AXS: Plus, you had to update your earlier, original works, since you’ve amassed so much more experience and knowledge about modern jazz as a part of your classical repertoire.

YE: Naturally, the older music material had to go though some changes and improvements. Using violin as a solo instrument was almost a revolutionary choice for me, not having ever been a big fan of violin [laughs]. However, for this project, I felt strongly that the sound and expressive capabilities of violin would be the best match possible for emotions I felt, like a knife cutting though old scars and yet still drawing some fresh blood.

AXS: How would you say this new album differs from previous ones, because they’re all a personalization of your innermost feelings and thoughts in outward form?

YE: First difference, the scores were more detailed, with more notes to read. At the same time, there were lengthier than usual open sections of free group improvisation. Second, the music is overall more dramatic, passionate, energized, as compared to some of my more relaxed and observant albums, such as Cold Sun, Glass Song, Lions, and Everblue. And finally, this project was the most difficult one to write the poems for, because the very concept presented much risk to come out melodramatically, rather than deeply personal.

AXS: Your own departure from the Soviet Union inspires much of this new album. It’s a harrowing, traumatic story of a mother and father who had to quite literally leave everything behind, including their children for a time. How hard was it to capture the emotions involved in the music?

YE: I had the best help possible through the most sensitive violin playing of Mark [Feldman], who managed to capture all the tender nuances of my stories. I think Mark plays on this album so patiently and sweetly that my own piano playing sounds to my ears almost colder than usual [smiles]. Likewise, Billy Hart, who had previously worked with me on Lions and A Touch of Radiance, added to the warm palette of this album through his passionate and colorful approach to drums. Finally, [bassist] Ben Street really liked and respected the music. You can really hear it in his playing. Every band member contributed to the inner passion of the music, and tracking of this album was stress-free: I have used first takes for just about every track. Everyone felt so in tune, to the point that after recording the last track, Billy stretched his hands and said to me, “Yelena, this is your perfect quartet.”

AXS: This sounds like a dumb question, but what made you want to leave your home and your family in Russia to live in the U.S.? Why risk so much, leaving your children behind temporarily, to start over in a brand new country?

YE: We were young when the USSR was falling apart. With the old system of beliefs collapsing around us, we were looking for something to lean on. Our immigration was in a way a spiritual quest. We had such a strong drive to leave our home country and such a conviction that we will succeed in our ways, that none of the obstacles and pitfalls could neither discourage, nor stop us.

AXS: What is the story behind “Love Train?” It’s one of the most upbeat pieces in the new album, and does kind of mirror the O’Jays’ pop-soul version from the ‘70s in the hustling percussive beats in the background of those sorrowful strings.

YE: I have never heard the O’Jays’ song until you mentioned it, but I don’t think this disco song is in any way similar to my “Love Train” (except in title). My song is about the joyful sound of the train ride I loved so much in my childhood. But this joy is mixed with my nostalgia (string melody floating over).

AXS: The poetry you also write to accompany the music elaborates on the backstory further. But it seems you’ve placed the underlying emotions in the music, to let the listener feel his/her own way through your shared journey. Have you ever thought about writing a book of poetry, or putting together a book of your art (which also accompanies this album)?

YE: Jazzwise magazine (UK), in a review of my Lions CD, even called me a “multimedia artist.” I would not go that far, since I don’t consider myself to be a poet or a painter. These two arts have always been just hobbies, my amateur efforts; even though, I can’t deny that they both come from my heart. My art/paintings and poetry that accompany my records starting with Glass Song (2013) are intended to help people get deeper inside of my album concept and to emphasize the sentiments that I express in my music. Frankly, the idea of publishing a book of my art and poetry has never crossed my mind. I do have to mention that my great-grandfather was a well-known, Russian impressionist painter Pyotr Myagkov (1870−1943). And my grandmother told me I paint in the similar style.

AXS: How much of this new album, and in a broader sense — your compositional style — uses modern jazz and classical music? How does each style shape your music?

YE: In my composing, I don’t draw a line between the styles — this is all organic, whole to me. Free and structured solos serve for me as an extension of the melodic structures, the vital part of them. Also, I often suggest written material for one musician to back up the improvisatory approach in the parts of other band members. Along comes the anticipation that a sudden new twist brought up by a band member may turn everything topsy-turvy, and this is one of the most fun parts of the whole process of creating a living, breathing, and changing musical composition. As a composer, I firmly believe in the direction of jazz dissolving into classical, and vice versa. I believe this is the only open road ahead to the 21st century composer.

AXS: It’s hard for many artists to pick and choose favorite songs. It’s like picking a favorite child. But if you could, what songs worked out better than you’d hoped, and even elicited surprising emotions out of you during the recording process?

YE: The title song of this album has quite a history. The first part of it I composed when I was 16 years old. At that time, I was much into rock music. The rest of it was composed when I was in my early 20s after I started digging into jazz. In 2000, while working solo in my MIDI studio, I used this song as a base for a stretcher piece, “Return to the Land of Israel,” on my CD, The Birth of Emmanuel. (Now you can understand the reference to Jews leaving Egypt in my poem for that track.) In 2003, I cataloged some of my early tunes in two albums of Piano Chronicles. I recorded this song on piano under the current name of Leaving Everything Behind. A few years later, while leading my local band in North Carolina, I adopted this song for our ensemble and we played it (with an oboe and cello) on some gigs. Then the song fell into oblivion for several years, until I conceived the Leaving Everything Behind project after I recorded Everblue in the fall of 2014. In fact, my idea to use violin for the whole project as the most matching-to-the mood instrument was strongly suggested by this song. This song also defined the album’s concept. This song has a special place in my heart, and I think it came out most beautifully — even better than I expected — on the record.

AXS: How much of an influence were the other musicians on your music? You have some amazing players helping interpret your dreams, drummer Billy Hart, bassist Ben Street, and violinist Mark Feldman, who really captures your Russian origins.

YE: Of course every musician played an important role in the finesse of the outcome, but obviously Mark was a crucial figure on this record. I will say more, I am not sure I could have made this album the way I desired if it was not for his great contribution.

AXS: You probably already have another album up your sleeve. Care to give a preview of that one?

YE: Next year, I am releasing a very fine record I made in Finland in the fall of 2013 with Verneri Pohjola on trumpet, Panu Savolainen (HERD) on vibes, Antti Lötjönen on bass, and Olavi Louhivuori on drums and percussion. This is a double CD. There I attempt to express musically some of my favorite smells! It is called, Blooming Tall Phlox.

Later this year, I am recording with the largest band that I ever had, and — I will let you in on a secret — it will have vocals. I hope to release this new project in 2018

Carol Banks Weber for AXS

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Title: Yelena Eckemoff becomes one with ‘Lions’

The Yelena Eckemoff Trio’s new Lions double-album comes with a thick CD booklet loaded with pictures of the musicians in action and poetry elaborating on the 14 original songs. On the album cover is a very realistic likeness of three lions in the safari. Eckemoff created all of the art and the music for her March 3, 2015 U.S. release with extreme care.

For most jazz musicians, album art — literary or visual — is the last thing on their minds. They’re only about the music, to the point where they don’t even care what the song titles are, just throw some words together and call it good. A classically trained pianist and composer originally from Moscow, Russia residing in North Carolina, Eckemoff doesn’t make music that way. She prefers to put thought into every detail from concept to execution, even providing her trio — Norwegian double-bassist Arild Andersen, and American drummer Billy Hart — with lead sheets and audio demos before the two-day recording session.

“For some musicians, music is just music. The names of the songs are expendable and what the music expresses is irrelevant — as long as it sounds good,” Eckemoff said in a February 9th press release written by John Kelman. “For me, the music has always been nothing less than captivating storytelling and a way to express my feelings and thoughts, as well as the world around me.”

Eckemoff got so into the narrative of her own music that she soon found herself virtually becoming one of the lions in the album, her eighth jazz venture on record in nine years. “As my imagination grew wilder, I started to fantasize about escaping the human world and turning into a lioness myself. My fantasies were so vivid at times that even now I have my doubts that the story of getting transported to the African savanna on the wings of migrating birds, finding myself in a lioness’ body, and then living in a lion’s pride was just a figment of my imagination,” Eckemoff continued in the press release. “Or was it for real? I hope whoever listens to the music and reads the story might find out for him or herself.”

This is a record that cannot be rushed, or brushed aside to zero in on the good parts. Like the poetic narrative Eckemoff wrote for each chronological story in the song, it’s best to listen over and over from beginning to end without missing one beat, note, or metronome effect (“Young At Play”). Eckemoff is such a cerebral yet heartfelt artist, that it’s impossible to soak in the full immersion of the experience of living in another plane, much less as another kind of animal — without taking the same care and time listening as she did in composing.

The opening track about “Lions” both traces the noble animals’ movements on a strange and barren land, while somehow seizing on what it must feel like to be “full of commanding grace,” with “primordial power [from Eckemoff’s poem].” Eckemoff’s strength as a classical-jazz artist is her ability to embody the very subject she describes through her humanizing music, whether it is rain pattering on a window (2013 Glass Song) or here, watching lions approach in their kingdom.

Each musician in her trio takes a part in the role of the lions, as well as the pride and the fearlessness of those lions: Eckemoff’s piano portrays the sure-footed movement, the graceful confidence, and the beauty especially of the lioness; Andersen’s job is much harder, shifting the movement with an undercurrent of drama and the anticipation of a metamorphosis — Eckemoff’s; and Hart plays the accents, highlighting the action and the mood. “Lions” is the longest song on the record, at nine minutes, 28 seconds, because the trio must set the mood, introduce the main characters, and stir the pot.

As fully prepared as Eckemoff was prior to the recording, it’s not hard to picture the musician losing herself in the notes and the feelings they provide. She must’ve felt incredibly maternal during “Young At Play,” as the music captured “little cubs scampering between [her] paws” — caught in the tumbling art of her reflective piano. But on an existential level, the short, four-minute-plus song does more than add a score to this brief, cute interlude. Towards the end, Eckemoff pulls up a very complex human emotion of hope in her baby cubs’ future as Andersen’s bass and Hart’s sticks slowly build toward that unknown — “You grow fast; will you not tear me to pieces when you learn that I used to be a human?” At the 3:40 mark, Eckemoff beautifully compounds a gradual, darkening shift upon the cubs’ tumbling act with the addition of somber, contrasting tones piling on one another, echoed in kind by Andersen’s bottomless rumbling.

If it weren’t for Eckemoff’s painstaking nature to take care of the mood shifts and emotions at play — these are lions with one absorbing a human soul! — much of the album would revert to soundtrack status, as in more sound effects and score (atmospheric music) than jazz jam sessions. “Migrating Birds,” the second longest song, is completely inventive in the use of the musicians orchestrating their instruments to replicate form from the formless — Billy Hart’s fluttering drums mimic the birds’ wings as they rattle against the wind in flight — and the overwhelming emotion of peace permeating throughout, almost too well. Very little happens to jolt or change the course of these “Migrating Birds” (instrumentation) on their placid journey.

With the first well-chosen, tone-heavy notes by Eckemoff on her piano, the mostly light and lively nature of Lions is thrown into the fiery depths of an ever-changing “Night In Savanna.” Or, as Eckemoff writes in her accompanying poem, “The sky is flaming with red, yellow, violet, and purple; Black silhouettes of vultures puncture an orange glow of dusk… And creepy shadows settle on me like a burden of conscience.” Somehow, the trio is able to manifest all of this in musical form, whether it’s the rising brush strokes of a hushed sunset in Hart’s percussive hands, or the more subtle interlocking sense of elongated time in Andersen’s sporadic, fading bass strings. Underneath the “bloody coat of human world,” Eckemoff controls the volume, speed, and deepens the gaze simply by where her fingers land and linger.

A cool little blues tune comes out of nowhere in the second half of this production with “Lions Blues.” Eckemoff shows off her flair with the extra flash, rattling and rolling as the exclamation points of each pulsating line. She even exhibits an inherent feel for that bluesy push-pull but within the context of the scenery in the “tropical rains.”

For Eckemoff, “one of the most heartfelt tunes” erupts in “Instinct,” about the “shameless mating ground for innocent lions.” In her poem, she calls it “the feral urge,” where “all insecurities of my former self are gone.” For such an openly sensual piece, she keeps the vibe free and easy, and gentle.

By the time “Joining The Pride” gives Billy Hart ample opportunity to start busting out his jazz-funk beats, the trio opens up the arch and triumph of a classically inclined, subdued roaming roster into more of a feral snap. The final piece, “Ode To Strength,” gives the musicians a little more wiggle room, and one can hear Hart jump-starting his kit to the ignition keyed in by Eckemoff. Alas, a jump is all he gets here. Melody is lost in the hunt for harmonic cables amidst “refreshing” avant-garde “gusts.”

Yelena Eckemoff Trio’s Lions is a long but comprehensive look at animals in the wild with human touches, a classical-jazz soundtrack that goes beyond the superficial, intermission grabs for attention and seeks out the feelings beneath the eerily accurate movements. For the most part, Eckemoff more than survives the wild; she civilizes it.

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Jazz Standard performance annotation by Carol Banks Weber for AXS

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Russian pianist and composer Yelena Eckemoff usually performs in a quiet, intimate trio setting for her exquisite modern, nature-centric jazz. But for her new album, A Touch Of Radiance, she expanded into a quintet, adding vibist Joe Locke and tenor saxophonist Mark Turner to the piano-bass-drums. She also expanded on her theme of finding solace in the safety and warmth of humanizing interpretations, the equivalent of a soul-satisfying hug while it storms outside.

For her August 12 CD release launch at New York City’s Jazz Standard, Eckemoff will introduce A Touch Of Radiance, track by loving track. “We’ll be playing exclusively the material from the new album,” she explained, yesterday.

Eckemoff brings a quartet to pull off the quintet-led recording, just for the CD party, with a few surprises. “For this performance, I have recruited Grammy-nominated saxophonist Donny McCaslin and lyrical drummer Eric McPherson. Bassist George Mraz, who plays on my new album, will also perform with me that night,” she described. “The quartet will offer an exciting contrast to the quintet sound on the album, and I am looking forward to exploring the different angles of the same music in this lineup. I absolutely love the sound and interpretation we have created on the CD, but the live performance with this all-star quartet group will be a nice alternative to the CD.”

McCaslin (Steps Ahead) is a bold addition to the quartet. The New York City-based musician’s own album, Casting For Gravity, features him on tenor sax, taking huge bites out of the groove, in total beast mode.

McPherson is another bold addition, having come from the school of master percussionist Michael Carvin and the Hartt School of Music’s Jackie McLean Institute on full scholarship. He benefitted greatly from the tutelage of a host of famous jazz percussionists (Max Roach, Freddie Waits) who knew his professional dancer/choreographer mom Saundra.

They join veteran bassist Mraz, who always comes ready with a full-bodied, voluptuous sound. The Czech Republic-born Mraz has an ear for the lyrical, which served him well when he arrived in Boston to attend the Berklee School of Music in 1968, and a year later, to play with Dizzy Gillespie’s band in New York. After Gillespie, it was onto Oscar Peterson, the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Orchestra, and Stan Getz, Zoot Sims, Bill Evans, and Tommy Flanagan.

Growing up in Moscow with loving parents, Eckemoff, their only child, learned early on to appreciate the beauty in everyday things, her picture books and her classical music, her pet Desi, her father’s poetic way with greetings, nature — sometimes harsh but always balanced by the warmth of a loving home. The classically gifted Eckemoff also learned to value the freedom of a free-form jazz, because back in those days, her country’s restrictive ironclad rule forbade such luxuries.

At the height of her creativity, she found like-minded musicians who were also activists. They hung out in a jazz studio founded by some of those activists who could play. There, she and her colleagues hungrily absorbed as much traditional jazz as they could lay their hands on. Those jazz principles would fuel her into breaking away as a most original artist with something to say and a unique style with which to say it.

By the time she and her husband were finally able to leave Moscow and live in the U.S. — first on their own, then back with their children — she was ready to turn her love of jazz and her knowledge of classical music into her very own signature.

Carol Banks Weber for AXS

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Title: Yelena Eckemoff humanizes jazz in follow-up to ‘Glass Song’

In America, Yelena Eckemoff is the new kid on the block. But the Russian pianist and composer plays as if she were born to the role of a jazz veteran. Born in Moscow, the classically trained musician soon found herself with activists hoarding the prohibited and valuable works of American jazz.

“Everything from the west was prohibited at that time,” she described, “and jazz was one of those things. But there was a jazz studio formed by some activists who were also professional musicians and we studied traditional jazz. I used jazz principles in my composing, which put me on a different path from other musicians.”

She eventually settled in the U.S. in 1991, where she focused completely on putting her memories and pieces of her life into a musical order quite different from anybody else. Musicians who’ve played and recorded with her have acknowledged the rewarding challenge in those differences.

Drummer Billy Hart, vibist Joe Locke, and double-bassist George Mraz recorded with Eckemoff on her upcoming album, A Touch Of Radiance, due out on August 12. Besides expertly melding jazz with her classical upbringing, Eckemoff humanizes jazz in the notes that mimic that of nature and people. Her style requires exact adherence to painstaking charts, with enough groove time to explore specific themes in each song. Her music plays beautifully, but also texturally and emotionally.

“She has her own thing — it is not a copy of another person’s music like you run into almost all the time,” marveled Mraz. “It was a challenge to flesh out these compositions of Yelena’s,” Locke said, “and I thank her for that challenge.” “Very rarely am I surprised like I am with Yelena,” Hart added. “Somebody that comes out of nowhere with this much maturity and experience and musicality. You don’t expect somebody that you don’t know to challenge you in such an enjoyable way. In a very euphoric way it was a very satisfying project for me.”

In their own way, each of the four musicians (tenor saxophonist Mark Turner completes the recording group) were asked to dive into Eckemoff’s world, touched by a loving childhood and a deep appreciation for nature’s ever-shifting forms. “The musicians helped me to paint my musical picture,” she described. “What made the project a success is that in addition to improvising brilliantly, all the musicians were extremely respectful to my written structures, tunes, and melodic lines. The combination of written and improvised music, as well as totally loose group improvisations has been my chosen musical language. With each new recording I am more comfortable with this language.”

A Touch Of Radiance continues Eckemoff’s tradition of humanizing nature through music, which she rendered so well in the quiet but reflective, Glass Song, from last year. In this upcoming album, which she plans to launch at New York City’s’ Jazz Standard August 12, Eckemoff expands her usual trio and gently guides her recording quintet into more of her childhood growing up in Moscow.

“I was an only child and I spent a lot of time alone with picture books. There’s a certain mood to this song that somehow connects me to a time when I was five years old, and was in my world of literature and images,” Eckemoff explained. Her new album represents that world of music in 10 original songs, literature — she wrote poems to accompany the songs, and imagery — her cover album is a painting she did of the sunset. The 70-minute album is accompanied by a 24-page color booklet featuring her liner poems and photographs of the process in the studio.

“I was ready to move on,” Eckemoff expressed. “My goals didn’t change: I wanted to express in music what I feel and what I experience. But utilizing more instruments gives your music a wider angle.”

Eckemoff used her musicians to render beautiful notes, but cadenced with an understanding of the myriad analogies of those notes, to be like actors and really get into their roles. Frequently, drummer Hart would do double-duty by playing the notes to forward the music, but to also reflect the subjects conjured up within each song, as in a movie soundtrack. Maybe his notes would replicate a person taking a stroll on cobblestone streets, or the sound a wood stove made as the fire lit and crackled. On “Affection,” Hart even asked Eckemoff “if I wanted him to be a little puppy or a big dog” for the song about her pet Desi.

Eckemoff carefully placed the songs in chronological order. “Inspiration” sets the tone, leaving wondrous, fragile notes as imagined by a child first daring to change the ominous effects of a dream. The playful vibes, the dramatic hilt of piano, hinting at a classical future, a double bass tip-toeing around jazz-heavy beats all call to mind a young girl’s promise, “I find myself at the piano with my fingers playing the keys. A bit exhausted from the journey, I play the last soaring chords before the quietness sinks in.” It is at once jazz, classical, and avant-garde in a movie soundtrack narrative.

The second song, “Reminiscence,” pays loving homage to a father who knew how to spark imagination and still a little girl’s fears when night fell, casting shadows that would appear as “creatures in the dark.” In her poem about the piece, Eckemoff wrote of her father’s appearance, “I met a rabbit on my way home. And look what a tasty treat he gave me for my little girl!” She captures the exuberance of her father and the calming effect he had on her when he finally arrived home after a long day through her piano composition, flecked with the gold of Turner’s warm tenor undertones, Locke’s locked-and-loaded vibes embodying a little girl’s fascination with “my small bed, mommy’s piano… My playground at daytime — covered with stacks of books and toys,” and Mraz’s bass tracking the sun’s path from the sky.

“Affection” goes from tender ballad to an ominous chord digression, constantly revolving. It is a song about her pet dog, Desi, and her fear that Desi would forget her once she went to city school “during the whole autumn semester.” The musicians used their instruments in a dire and rift to resolve the whole issue by the song’s gentle fade. Turner’s saxophone hits all the right dramatic notes to signify the puppy’s anguish at leaving its original family, and then Eckemoff’s uncertainty, as well as those warm moments playing together and learning tricks. Locke takes on the role of Desi on his vibes, playing with Eckemoff on the piano, as he lets his many notes tumble all over her spare, grounding ones exuding much strength, love, and care.

If “Reminiscence” is about a little girl’s dependence on her parents for protection and comfort, “Pep” is about that little girl all grown up having to be a parent to her own child. She transforms a life as mom into a snazzy, surefire, fairly fast-paced jazz modality with chords played in contrasting notes, always on the edge of a post-bop revolt — a perfect assault on all those “millions of chores to do while the baby is asleep. Even more — when he is awake. Washing and line-drying all day, cooking, mixing and warming up milk, feeding, playing with the baby, playing the piano…” The saxophonist and vibist feed into the frenzy, providing a musical caliber of those chores at that frantic pace, with the bassist marking time for the weight of a superhuman daily accomplishment. When Eckemoff trails off at the upper registers of those keys, barely holding on, and drummer Hart carves out a special percussive moment out of thin air, as “life is spinning from chore to chore,” it’s the best of bop-experimental.

Eckemoff can exude the best of melody and harmony in the most far-out experimental jazz. “Imagination” combines her expertise in classical-avant-garde with her love of jazz in the tones and textures of piano, horn, drums, and bass. She uses everyone in her recording band to stretch out the humanization of a winter snow scene — imagined on a hot summer day. That juxtaposition is her gift, and she applies it well to give another soundtrack to her imaginative childhood crossing over into a very adult jazz piece that seems to flow from one train of melodic thought into another. The very same juxtaposition is found in her liner poem: “We dance to the cheerful sounds of the crackling wood. And the loud purring of our drowsy cat. The brutal winds outside do not scare me when I have a refuge in his strong arms.” It can be scary outside, but inside, in her world, it is always safe and warm, and wonderfully alive.

One of the most poetic songs, “Tranquility,” epitomizes the artist that is Eckemoff. She matches the lyrical quality of the song with the lyrical poem accompanying it in her liner notes. “I hear the faint fluttering of the butterflies’ wings. Yet the gun shots are inaudible to my ears. I hear the fish swimming in the pond. But the moving cars are silent to me.” This speaks to her childhood of a loving family, a father who speaks in imaginatively poetic tongue, and yet, a homeland rife with tension, conflict, hard, brutal winters, and violent subversion. Because of such a childhood, Eckemoff is able to focus on the sounds — and the sights — that keep her world safe and warm.

This is reflected in the song, five minutes and 20 seconds of music blotting out encroaching storms with some of the loveliest interludes — at times revving to get going, as in the 52-second intro of soft crushing cymbals and sax. Eckemoff feels her way in shaky spurts that progressively grow more self-assured. Bassist Mraz shadows her, giving her additional strength and a direction forward. Vibist Locke provides the childlike, imaginative animation that once spoke volumes, and tenor saxophonist Turner reintroduces the jazz that sustained her, touching on the tenets of Coltrane on a sultry Blue Note night.

“I’m a sentimental person, but I don’t write sentimental music,” Eckemoff explained, laughing. “I know better. I’m an old-fashioned romantic. Feelings and emotions and of course nature are always what interest me, and I still believe in melodies.”

Yelena Eckemoff manages to impart a greater sense of herself in 10 short story tracks with a quartet of likeminded musicians. She touches on the jazz-classical-avant-garde, art and poetry, and a narrative that sees the human connection in every leaf, the passing flutter of butterflies, and a snowy day in the summer — radiant.

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