Jazz Journal UK

Michael Tucker for Jazz Journal UK

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Title: Biblically inspired Russian pianist mixes shape-shifting atmosphere with, in the shape of blues and swing, archetypal jazz poetics.

I Am A Stranger In This World continues the engagement with biblical psalms which marked the Russian-born but American-domiciled pianist and polymath Eckemoff’s Better Than Gold Or Silver of 2016, but drops the vocals which appeared on disc one of that two-CD set.

Several tracks of Stranger In This World offer further material from the 2016 sessions which furnished the second, all-instrumental disc of Better Than Gold Or Silver. They sit well within the overall flowing whole that is Stranger In This World.

A glance at the personnel should be be enough to indicate the quality of both thoughtful and exhilarating musicianship which distinguishes the music: throughout, there is a beautiful range of nuanced dynamics. Conspicuous here is Eckemoff’s desire to combine her penchant for freely cast and coloured melodic exposition and shape-shifting atmosphere, epitomised here by Keep Not Your Silence and At Midnight I Shall Rise, with archetypal jazz poetics: witness the delicious (and varied) blues-sprung ambience of, e.g., Lighten My Eyes and I Shall Not Want or the lightly inflected and affirmative swing of As Chaff Before The Wind and Make Haste To Help Me.

Mark Sullivan’s sleeve-note offers informative insight into the project. But there are no quotations from the various psalms which inspired Eckemoff, rather a list of their numbers and the verses within them which precipitated the particular nature of the compositions. At least half of the 12 pages of photographs of the musicians which follow surely could have been exchanged for a helpful setting of the texts. But don’t let that put you off investigating what is perhaps Eckemoff’s most immediately attractive release to date.

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Michael Tucker for Jazz Journal UK

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Title: The pianist offers an impressionistic, sometimes swinging tone-poem about the life of a columbine wildflower.

Following her excellent Nocturnal Animals with Arild Andersen (b) and drummers Thomas Strønen and Jon Christensen, Eckemoff’s Adventures Of The Wildflowers continues the good news, albeit in music of distinctly different instrumentation, voicings and dynamics.

As with a good few of the previous releases from this classically trained but jazz-fired polymath, the programme is augmented by a generous complement of well-packaged visual images and poetic reflections (in prose format this time) from Eckemoff, evincing the animistic spirituality which informs this soulful, now gently impressionistic, now vibrantly turned musical tone-poem about the life of a columbine wildflower.

There are a couple of useful online items about this project where Ekemoff underlines her goal of shaping compositions which leave essential room for contributions from all participants. Programmed well and beautifully recorded, the two-CD set sees the return of most of the notable Finnish musicians with whom Eckemoff worked on her Blooming Tall Phlox of 2017: the subtly attuned interplay of Savolainen, Lötjönen and Louhiuori dovetails beautifully with the contributions of the leader herself, Saari and Perko.

While one might regret the absence of Verneri Pohjola (t, flh) – who appeared on Phlox – Saari and Perko join Savolainen in bringing many an affecting figure to music which, for me, often recalled and set in fresh register the delicious suspended or floating quality which distinguished much of Eckemoff’s 2011 Forget-Me-Not with Mats Eilertsen (b) and Marilyn Mazur (d, pc) as well as her 2014 A Touch Of Radiance with Mark Turner (ts), Joe Locke (vib), George Mraz (b) and Billy Hart (d).

Atmospheric touches of glass harp and theremine from Saari – who chiefly contributes tasty, rhythmically and sonically diverse guitar – are never overdone. And if there are various passages of rubato reflection and chromatic eeriness (sample Germination, Dying and Another Winter) there is also, as always with Eckemoff, plenty of crystal-cut melody as well as much cohesively thought through rhythmic momentum and variety, as elegant as it is potent.

Overall, Adventures Of The Wildflower serves to underline the breadth and depth of Eckemoff’s reverie-rich sensibilities, her unerringly organic, even shape-shifting sense of now fluid, now cleanly delineated motivic form and dynamics. I was especially pleased to hear Jukka Perko in music of such exquisitely rendered group interaction and adroitly pitched individual voice. A musician of wide and distinctive capacity, he has a CV ranging from the tango-fed The Music Of Olavi Virta to the haunting strings-enhanced Land Of Canaan: Northern Hymns and the recent Dizzy, a tribute to the bebop master in whose band he once worked.

Here, Perko joins the equally excellent Saari and Savolainen in contributing consistently apt and inventive lines and colour to Eckemoff’s poetic vision, moving effortlessly from, e.g., the finger-clicking swing of Dog Chasing A Mouse to the ostinato pulse and teasing, free-touched cross-accents of Chickens (where Louhiuori is in typically crisp, intelligent and enlivening form). Music to make one feel and wonder, think and dream – and smile.

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Michael Tucker for Jazz Journal UK

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In his 20/01/19 review of Eckemoff’s Better Than Gold And Silver – a post which to date has received over 6,500 hits – Fred Grand wryly characterised Eckemoff’s music as among the finest never recorded by Manfred Eicher. While at times a touch reminiscent of Paul Bley, Eckemoff is very much her own musician. Her lyrical touch and very particular approach to what one might call the “weight” of phrasing, dynamics and rhythm are set in service of compositions which precipitate an unerringly characterful blend of poetically wrought beauty and a distilled yet expansive improvisational verve.

I first heard this classically trained, Russian-born but American-domiciled polymath (a captivating painter and touching poet as well as top-order pianist) on her 2013 Glass Song with Andersen and Peter Erskine (d). Impressed, I have since come to relish a good many of Eckemoff’s releases on her L & H label, including the surpassing Everblue of 2015 with Tore Brunborg (ts), Andersen and Christensen.

Eckemoff favours a productive combination of consistency and diversity in her personnel, often drawing upon Nordic players but also recording with the likes of Erskine, Billy Hart and Manu Katché. Here, Andersen and Christensen from Everblue feature, while Brunborg’s place is taken by Norwegian drummer Strønen, making for both a fascinating line-up and an outstanding two-CD set.

This was to be Christensen’s final recording session and it stands as a lasting testament to his space-conscious, cymbal-shimmering and bar-slipping magic. The excellent, ever-alert Strønen is also to be applauded. Hear, for example, the sparely wrought musings he and Christensen conjure at the end of Wolf, or the richness of their interplay on both Fox and what Andersen (pizzicato on both CDs and in typically resonant and compelling form throughout) has described to me as the craziest 5/4 piece he can recall playing: the funkily offset, richly turned and twisting Lynx.

There’s much rubato inwardness here, as in the mellow Cicada, Toad, Firefly, Owl and the opening atemporal figures of Wolf. But there are also extensive passages of joyous, forthright albeit freshly turned and textured swing, exemplified by the development of Hedgehog and the medium-up Fox, with Andersen’s delicious walking figures on the latter underpinning Eckemoff ‘s chordal incisiveness and deft linear flights. All in all, a splendid, unmissable example of a most distinctive artist’s ever-thoughtful, ever-lively and – above all – soulful world.

Reviewer rating: 5 stars
 
SUMMARY: “There’s much rubato inwardness here, as in the mellow Cicada, Toad, Firefly, Owl and the opening atemporal figures of Wolf. But there are also extensive passages of joyous, forthright albeit freshly turned and textured swing.

OVERALL SCORE:  5 stars

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Fred Grand for Jazz Journal UK

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Classically trained in Soviet-era Moscow, Yelena Eckemoff is an interesting phenomenon. Arriving in New York in 1991, she initially pursued interests in classical, folk and religious music. It wasn’t until 2009 that her career as a jazz artist began in earnest, and this is now the 13th straight release in a recent discography in which she performs on equal terms with some of the finest musicians in the idiom. From ECM stalwarts Arild Andersen, Jon Christensen, Paul McCandless and Peter Erskine to the elite cadre of New Yorkers heard here, Eckemoff’s music can perhaps wryly be described as being amongst the finest recordings that Manfred Eicher never produced.

This somewhat unusual project traces its roots back to collapse of the Soviet Union. Eckemoff was one of many Russians who rediscovered a sense of religious spirituality during those turbulent years. Adapting 10 selected psalms, the music is presented in both vocal and instrumental versions. The format makes every sense given the devotional nature of the music, but perhaps revealingly the vocals of Cruz (tenor) and Mayo (mezzo soprano) were retro-fitted long after the group’s initial visit to the studio.

Unmistakably heartfelt and often stunningly beautiful, the pieces nevertheless seem relatively stiff and formal when contrasted with the longer and more organic instrumentals. Rarely less than sublime, the group has that same symbiotic connectedness as John Abercrombie’s latter-day quartets. A different member of the ensemble carries the vocal line each time, tracing adulatory melodic arcs before dissolving into blissful passages of improvisation. Overall this ambitious project is a bit of a curate’s egg, but certainly not one lacking in intrinsic quality and worth.

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