Dan Bilawsky

Dan Bilawsky for New York Jazz Record

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Beyond her obvious skills – sophisticated pianist, composer, writer and painter – Yelena Eckemoff’s greatest strength may be an ability to draw on life’s surroundings to guide and enrich the aural experience. This prolific artist’s work is constantly nurtured by environment – hers and ours, collectively – and she’s always uncovering narratives hidden within. One need only look at Eckemoff’s discography to glean that information. She captured the temperature of a persistent winter in a trio with  bassist Mads Vinding and drummer Peter Erskine on 2010’s ‘Cold Sun’; harnessed the light in emotion with help from tenor saxophonist Mark Turner, vibraphonist Joe Locke, bassist George Mraz and drummer Billy Hart during 2014’s ‘A Touch of Radiance’; explored the divine beauty of shores and tides in the company of saxophonist Tore Brunborg, bassist Arild Andersen and drummer Jon Christensen on 2015’s ‘Everblue’; and defined life in varied shades with drummer Manu Katche through 2019’s ‘Colors’. That list barely scratches the surface considering that Eckemoff  delivered 15 releases between 2010 and 2020, but it clearly makes the point.

So too does this evocative and absorbing double-album. Reuniting with vibraphonist Panu Savolainen, bassist Antti Lotjonen and drummer Olavi Louhivuori, who assisted the pianist in making musical sense of scents on 2017’s ‘Blooming Tall Phlox’, and adding two more notable Finns-saxophonist Jukka Perko and guitarist / multi-instrumentalist Jarmo Saari – Eckemoff sets off to tell the tale of a wildflower’s life and times. The perennial, given the fitting name Columbine, starts out as a seed seeking full life. Eckemoff and company conjure the warm glow of its growth in moving from mellow and curious environs to brighter atmospheres on the “In the Ground” opener. At the other end of the program, with seedlings at the aged protagonist’s side, the music dances to the pulse of life in “Baby Columbines”. Between those points, there’s much to admire in exchanges, improvisations and composed expressions. “Germination” peaks out in different directions, with sprigs represented in jangles and angles. “Rain” falls gently, early, in simple motivic play and development. “Drought” sounds to arid climates and, later, reflection. And “Buds and Flowers” presents as a fantastical gardenscape.

This music, rich in representation, is magical and Eckemoff and company blossom right along with it.

For more information, visit landhproduction.com

THE NEW YORK CITY JAZZ RECORD MARCH 2021

Dan Bilawsky for New York Jazz Record

Dan Bilawsky for Jazz Times

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Yelena Eckemoff is no synesthete, yet she’s long conjured the sound of colors through the piano’s keys. In this duo encounter with style-spanning drumming Manu Katché, she explores the titular topic with the most marked of intentions.

Eckemoff traces the various stages of human life and growth in various tints and tones. The album opens with “White,” a radiant yet fragile take on tabula rasa. “Black,” not surprisingly, sits at the other end of the journey. It’s weightier, with greater wisdom and experience to be found in its poetry. But purely bleak it’s not. Clearly, death isn’t the definite end in this darkest of dimensions.

Exploring another 12 shades of being between those poles, Eckemoff and Katché prove both sympathetic and suggestive in their union. Whether channeling childhood through the rocking “Orange,” playing on young love’s mystery and beauty in the blooming “Violet,” or daydreaming and worrying about new life’s arrival on “Blue,” this duo manages to create a fine mixture of calculation and impulse. Eckemoff’s emotional arcs prove unpredictable in the most positive of ways and, with Katché’s cymbals and skin tones accompanying her, even the most simple and serene notions play as something more significant.

Despite having already showcased her classically informed, ECM-influenced aesthetic on more than a dozen albums in the past decade, seeing to everything from accompanying artwork and poetry to composing and contracting, Eckemoff shows no signs of slowing down. The music continues to flow, and her well clearly runs deep.

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Dan Bilawsky for Jazz Times

Dan Bilawsky for All About Jazz

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While the art of playing jazz qualifies as a multisensory experience, involving listening, touching, and seeing, it usually doesn’t extend so far as to include the sense of smell. But that’s not to say that a nose for scents has no place in musical and artistic spheres. If you need convincing, just look at Blooming Tall Phlox.

For her tenth album in six years, pianist Yelena Eckemoff uses life and nature’s bouquets as her muse. Her memory sniffs out various ideas and moments in time, which are then remarkably translated to the page and further expanded upon in performance. There are no secrets to be found in the titles themselves, as Eckemoff points directly to the aromas and odors that inspired them, but the music is full of mystique and aural arcana. In considering those facts, Blooming Tall Phlox can accurately be described as Eckemoff’s most and least direct album to date.

Eckemoff and her band, comprised of up-and-coming Finnish musicians, explore fifteen different topics here, split over two CDs and divided into two seasonal categories—”Summer Smells” and “Winter Smells.” The album opens in the former season with the title track. A gentle metallic clang greets the listener, inviting the ears into a free and nebulous atmosphere at first glance. Bassist Antii Lötjönen eventually helps the music to coalesce, and trumpeter Verneri Pohjola, entering more than a minute into the piece, further assists in the binding process. Pohjola’s searching horn draws focus upon its entrance, but it doesn’t retain control. Eventually solid shapes are reduced to seemingly formless wanderings that eventually merge anew and evolve into a courtly dance for Eckemoff, Pohjola, vibraphonist Panu Savolainen. This initial offering doesn’t define what’s to follow, but it illustrates how concrete writing and indeterminate thoughts both have a seat at the table when Eckemoff is at the head of it.

As Eckemoff and company continue to move through the lazy days of summer, they continue to toy with expectations. “Apples Laid Out On The Floor,” a number with a swinging subtext, benefits from the use of an accelerando and rallentando that help to create a tempo arc in the music; “Baba Liza’s Singer” builds off of minimalistic layering before using Pohjola as a directional beacon to take the music from dirge-like depths to soaring heights; “Old-Fashioned Bread Store” sways and swoons, presents some of Eckemoff’s hippest soloing on the album, and offers another opportunity to appreciate the interplay between trumpet, piano, and vibraphone; and “Fish Fried On Open Fire” presents like an attractively quirky tango in a slow glide, inviting the ear to take part in an oddly alluring dance.

The trip into winter that occurs on the second disc is equally intriguing, but it isn’t the icy spell that might be expected. Eckemoff certainly conjures a chill, as displayed on the sedate yet impactful “Smoke From The House Chimneys In Frosty Air,” but she largely shuns glacial tempos and oh-so-spare atmospheres here. “Clementines And Candies On Christmas Tree,” for example, puts beauty and strength in balance and focus, and “Scented Candles And Sparkling Wine” grows from daintiness and gaiety to a controlled groove that’s magic.

Whether you appreciate this music or not, you really have to hand it to Eckemoff. She’s quickly managed to create an enviable body of work that blends post-modern abstraction, classical thought, and jazz language into a seamless whole. There’s a fearlessness in her art that’s not always addressed in discussions of her work. It’s not so easy to just dive into jazz when you’re further down life’s road, it’s certainly a challenge to try to match forces with some of the music’s giants shortly after taking the initial plunge, and it’s quite difficult to create original music that offers intelligent thought and surprise when you’re working under the aforementioned realities. Kudos to her for overcoming those obstacles.

Eckemoff may not be a pure jazz musician, but who is these days? She has her own voice, she knows how to utilize her gifts, and she’s managed to create quite a lot of compelling music in an incredibly short period of time. We may not know where she’ll go next, but if the recent past is any indication, she’ll probably go there soon, and it will probably be a trip unlike any other.

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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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