Flying Fiddlesticks

New York composer and pianist Yelena Eckemoff chose the late first millennium period for her muse in creating her newest album, Scenes From The Dark Ages.

Born in Russia, Yelena Eckemoff is a pianist and composer who has concentrated largely on jazz and jazz fusion during her career. Her stint in a prog rock band made a lasting impression, and her interest in the castling period of European history overlapped with that enthusiasm, leading to Scenes From The Dark Ages. The band is Yelena Eckemoff (piano, organ, clavichord, celesta, synth), Riccardo Bertuzzi (guitar), Carlo Nicita (soprano, alto, and bass flutes), Eloisa Manera (acoustic and electric violin), Riccardo Oliva (bass), and Trilok Gurtu (drums ).

“This project is so different from my others because it has a prog-rock feel,” Eckemoff says. “I didn’t want just guitar and bass; I wanted rock guitar and electric bass and really strong drums. On this recording you’ll hear me playing not only piano, but Medieval instruments like organ, clavichord, harpsichord, and celesta. I also wanted violin and flute, and I think this somewhat atypical instrumentation gives the music another dimension.”

The album is long, and so it is split over two discs. On the first, “Pilgrims” leads off with a jazz-injected classical piano lead, folk instruments alongside, and truly odd percussion that usually seems unrelated to the other music. The successive pieces follow the initial setup closely in the sense that Eckemoff overlays disparate ideas and styles, prognosticating a symbiosis. In a way, it is not entirely unlike the approach composers such as Frank Zappa sometimes took, combining unlikely and unrelated ideas to create a finished piece that somehow works as its unruly constituents feud with each other. While my favorite pieces feature electric guitar, like “Spell-Bound Fortress,” the music is fascinating throughout, in every form it takes.

The longer pieces are the more intriguing of the bunch. Moments of isolated coherence trade places now and then, and the jarring percussion never disappears entirely. The organ on “Cathedral” is beautiful, “Legends Of The Castle” is mysterious and playful, and “Battle” is a contained calamity. There is a lot to hear, and most of it is up for interpretation. There is an opportunity for this album to bridge some gaps between genres, bringing listeners together who might not often otherwise meet.

Scenes From The Dark Ages goes out far and wide on Friday, March 28th from L&H Productions. Listen and buy at the links below.