Dan McClenaghan

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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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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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.

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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Dan McClenaghan for All About Jazz

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Pianist Yelena Eckemoff’s backstory doesn’t suggest the potential for a rise to the category of top level jazz pianist. But here she is, after emigrating to the U.S. from Russia with her husband—leaving her children (temporarily) and everything else (permanently) behind in 1991 to escape repression and to start a new life. Classically trained in her homeland, Eckemoff came to jazz relatively late. With persistence, talent, ambition, audacity and a seemingly unshakable optimism, she has navigated her way to the top echelon of the jazz world and created a substantial discography of very good to excellent recordings, collaborating with the cream of rhythm section cohorts—bassists Arild Andersen and Jon Christensen, drummers Peter Erskine and Billy Hart.

Eckemoff doesn’t go about her craft by throwing a bunch of disparate tunes or ideas together. What she does is establish themes—such as Lions (L & H Production, 2012), or remembered aromas from her childhood, Blooming Tall Phlox (L & H Production, 2013)—fashioning herself into a master conceptualist.

Eckemoff’s first release of 2018—she is persistently prolific—is Desert, a musical exploration of the magic of vast and seemingly barren lands, of mirages and drifting, whispering sands, of muted pastels of vast, wide-open spaces.

She has chosen to employ for the project the previously mentioned teammates, bassist Arild Anderson and drummer Peter Erskine. New to her ensemble is multiple reedman Paul McCandless, a founding member of the group Oregon.

A Middle-Eastern mood pervades on a set of Eckemoff originals, sounds tinted by the influence of the Arabian peninsula: “Bedouins,” “Mirages,” “Desert Cry” and “Colors Of Nothingness.” The arrangements are succinct and crisply executed. Drummer Erskine gives a masterclass in elevating the music throughout, in the way that Paul Motian always did, with a distinctively different approach.

Eckemoff’s compositions have a characteristic refinement, their accessible complexities woven through by McCandless’ sinewy melodic lines from his oboe, English horn, soprano saxophone and bass clarinet. And a bonus—Eckemoff’s prose and poetry included in the twenty-plus page cover booklet that adds a vocabulary to her musical ideas. Especially compelling is her short story “Bedouins.” She is proving herself as fine a writer as she is a musician on this excellent work of art.

When the coils of time were dissolved, the desert endured.—Yelena Eckemoff, from her poem “Desert Remained.”

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Dan McClenaghan for All About Jazz

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Yelena Eckemoff Quartet: Everblue In a quick follow-up to her masterful two CD set Lions, Russian-born and now North Carolina-based pianist Yelena Eckemoff offers up Everblue, the most “ECM Records-sounding” set not on that deservedly esteemed label. It is, rather, released on her own L&H Productions.

The names of the sidemen on the date explain in part the ECM-like sound: saxophonist Tore Brunborg, bassist Arild Andersen, and drummer Jon Christensen, the Norwegian contingent, are all long time ECM Records artists, as leaders and hired guns for other players, and their long term contributions have been instrumental in shaping the ECM aesthetic of subtlety, intricacy, and fluid motion.

Refined beauty, coming from a place of deep commitment combined with the foundation of a serious musical education, mixed with spontaneous joy, a relentless searching for the divine and a childlike sense of wonder is what makes Yelena Eckemoff’s music so special, so edge-of-the-seat mesmerizing. With her Norwegian bandmates, the sum of the parts adds up to unfathomable whole. The music glows, as if enveloped in an aura. Everyone solos, nobody solos? Sometimes that means an auditory mess. But Eckemoff’s music has such of preconceived structure that the “thread” never unravels or tangles. On Everblue, the tunes sound like written-out pieces with a judicious flexibility built in for the individual players. Some of ECM Records to which Everblue can be compared (the sets falling into the Euro-folkloric aesthetic) can sound placid, in a very good sense of the word. With Everblue the sound here always has an “edge,” a dynamic four-way input of the individual parts that never allows the listener’s attention to wane: Brunborg’s organically sacred sax work on tenor and soprano, Andersen’s sharp, singing bass lines, Christansen’s rustling drum work, the ringing cymbal accents, Eckemoff’s virtuosic, crystalline touch and prayerful, gorgeous immediacy.

There are ten tunes here, eight by Eckmoff and two by Andersen. The Ecklemoff-penned tunes explore the conept of beaches and oceans, while Andersen’s are more abstract, freer. Eckemoff painted the cover art, and wrote poems (included in the cover booklet) for each of her songs. She has, after a career as in classical and sacred music, evolved—in five short years and eight jazz albums—into a major jazz artist

The year 2015 has been a productive one for Yelena Eckemoff, with two extraordinary recordings—Lions and Everblue, both sets worthy of end-of-the-year, top ten list consideration.

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Dan McClenaghan for All About Jazz

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Yelena Eckemoff has a lot to say artistically. The Russian-born, classically-trained pianist—now home-based in North Carolina—has released eight jazz albums in the past nine years, sets that are packed to the digital rafters with close to the time limit for the CD format—in the 70-plus minute range. For Lions, the ideas spilled over onto two CDs, a ninety-four minutes of music that is—according to the set’s drummer, Billy Hart—prophetic.

Eckemoff has a way of working with themes, with A Touch of Radiance (L & H Productions, 2014) exploring “a state of happiness or confidence when everything around you is shining,” and Cold Sun (L & H Productions, 2010) is a disc-length rumination on a lingering winter. Lions takes the thematic approach to a higher level.

The pianist came upon the theme of lions via bassist Arild Andersen, after he had worked with Eckemoff on Glass Songs (L & H Productions, 2010). He told her he had ordered a bass with a lions head carved onto its neck, and Eckmoff’s imagination took off. She saw her next recording as a trio of lions—herself, Andersen and Hart—leading into the idea of writing a suite about real lions, their environment, their lives and small pleasures and struggles. In the fashion of a sci- fi/fantasy work, Eckemoff even felt she had almost been been transformed into a lioness and transported to the savanna, interacting with the pride. Taken literally, it sounds farfetched. On another level, listening to this music, reading the poems that correspond to each musical piece (written by Eckemoff), and seeing the slightly surreal cover painting, by Eckemoff, it’s obvious her feelings in the direction of the fantasy were vivid and real, and productive.

Eckemoff’s classical side runs deep. For many, “Jazz” mean improvisation. But Eckemoff writes her tunes out, with relatively little improvisation room. On the other hand, Arild Andersen and Billy Hart are master improvisors with a combined hundred plus years experience. In this structured approach, with the pianist playing the written notes, the bassist and drummer are free to embellish and accent, to color and underscore, and to enhance and weave a tapestry of surprise and—in the case of this vibrant and very alive music from Eckemoff—inject a sense of wonder.

The disc opens with the title tune. Like all the music on the disc, it is intricate and cerebral and very engaging, with a “commanding grace.” “Migrating Birds” features Andersen’s signing, incisive bass and Hart’s subtle symphony with the brushes, evoking the flutter of a hundred wings of birds flushed from the brush. Eckemoff explores a pensive delicacy, wistfully.

On “Night in Savanna” the trio dips into the mystery and quietude of the dark hours with an unwavering aplomb, an unabashed impressionistic beauty. “Lions Blues” sounds like a celebration of the coolest, most bad-assed animal on the savanna, and “Instinct,” called by Eckemoff “a melody of love [that] pictures a shameless mating ground for innocent lions” is lovely beyond words.

Lions sounds like Yelena Eckemoff letting go, following her muse with a focused fervor. The music—structured gorgeousness in the embrace of the improvisational elan of Andersen and Hart—is Yelena’s strongest statement to date, a flawless and beguiling work of art.

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