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No recordings, it seems, are more informed by their creator’s personality than pianist Yelena Eckemoff’s. While every album is very much part of a continuum, each also stands apart when the concept and personnel change from one to the next. Common to all, however, are compositions written by the pianist, the paintings she creates for each project, and the texts, be they poems or stories, she writes that function as creative impetuses for her and her guests. Add to that her distinctive approach to the piano and the directing hand she brings to the recording sessions and the result can’t help but be an Eckemoff product in the fullest sense.

Her latest, a double-CD set titled Lonely Man and His Fish, checks all the aforementioned boxes. The text in this case is a beguiling story about Tim, who spends his post-retirement days playing trumpet next to a newly acquired aquarium that’s home to a fish he calls Spark. A bicycling accident sends Tim to the hospital, which leads him to ask a nurse to release his fish into a nearby pond lest it die from neglect. Spark survives a series of harrowing episodes until Tim, now freed from the hospital, plays his trumpet near the spot where his friend was released and is reunited with the fish. The narrative ends with the two comfortably ensconced in Tim’s home and rejoicing in the simple pleasures of life together. The story possesses all the innocent charm of a children’s tale and could as easily be presented as a book geared for young readers and featuring her text and paintings.

The music and narrative are smartly conjoined in two ways. First, the story’s interspersed with chapter headings that are also used for the fourteen track titles. Secondly, two of the five musicians assume the roles of Tim and Spark, the lonely man represented by cornetist Kirk Knuffke and the fish Japanese flautist Masaru Koga. Such moves provide a programmatic grounding for the project that makes it all the more enjoyable. The high calibre of musicianship Knuffke, Koga, (acoustic and electric) bassist Ben Street, drummer Eric Harland, and, of course, the leader bring to the performances is also critical to the impression the project makes.

With the five musicians weaving their way through her characteristically intricate compositions, the tone of the playing is complementary to the story; at the same time, each of her guests imposes his stamp on her material, making for music that’s instantly identifiable as Eckemoff’s yet marked by the personalities of her partners. Armed with a smooth, vocal-like delivery and infusing his playing with earthy, New Orleans flavour, Knuffke fits cozily into the material, quick on his feet, agile, and responsive to where the music leads. Much the same could be said of Street and Harland, who solidly animate the performances with assurance and imagination. Koga provides an effective foil to Knuffke, the woodsy timbres of his Japanese flutes registering distinctly against those of the cornet and piano. Eckemoff’s playing distances itself from other jazz pianists for a number of reasons. Her classical training, the music she absorbed in Russia before moving to the United States in 1991 and the sounds she’s been exposed to in the decades since, the impact on her of the many musicians with whom she’s played—all such things have made her into the versatile player she is today. Including Lonely Man and His Fish, eighteen albums have appeared on her L & H Records label since 2010’s trio outing with bassist Mads Vinding and drummer Peter Erskine, Cold Sun. The ever-adventurous Eckemoff isn’t afraid to stretch out either, with the new set seeing her augment acoustic piano with Fender Rhodes and Musser Ampli-celeste.

Fittingly, “Lonely Man” initiates the album in quartet mode, with Koga sitting out until “Pet Store” documents Tim’s first encounter with the fish. The intertwining of the musicians’ lines anticipates the close relationship he and Spark will nurture, despite being vastly different creatures. During “First Evening at Home,” the connection between them advances when Tim matches his playing to the fish’s movements in the aquarium. As the music swings, it’s easy to visualize Spark’s graceful movements and Tim’s attempt to mirror them. Similar to “Lonely Man,”“Into the Wild” excludes Knuffke from the performance when the track recounts Spark’s removal to the pond during Tim’s hospital stay. It’s a strategy carried on throughout the release, such that the cornetist and flutist sit out during those parts of the story where they’re absent.

The quintet ventures down a number of different stylistic pathways during the eighty-seven minutes, from bluesy whimsy (“Breakfast for Two”) and funky swagger (“Man and His Fish”) to turmoil (“Accident”), despondency (“Empty House”), and yearning (“Song for Spark”). Just as their first meeting brought joy, the album-closing “Dreaming Together” finds Koga and Knuffke exchanging leads and expressing delight at being reunited. Lonely Man and His Fish is, as Eckemoff’s releases consistently are, wholly endearing and original. Stamped through and through with her signature, the ever-evolving music offers a striking complement to the story. At the same time, the performances hold up perfectly well separate from the narrative when the interactions between the five are so inspired. As she’s done before, Eckemoff shows herself to be a great recruiter of talent and keen to the chemistry that emerges when exceptional musicians are assembled.

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I Am a Stranger in This World shares many qualities with other releases in Yelena Eckemoff’s discography. A painting by the Moscow-born pianist adorns the cover, stellar musicians help bring her compositions to vivid life, and the release, an expansive double-CD set, appears on her own L&H Production label. There are telling differences, however: whereas previous releases include multiple, often nature-based images by her, there’s but a single, city-oriented one this time, and the feelings of isolation and despair conveyed by the album title and cover image reflect a desire for liberation consistent with the period during which much of the album was recorded.

As the pandemic was wreaking havoc, Eckemoff, trumpeter Ralph Alessi, guitarist Adam Rogers, bassist Drew Gress, and drummer Nasheet Waits gathered in NYC in December 2020 to record eight of the eleven tracks; the other three are holdovers from the 2016 sessions for her Better Than Gold and Silver release and feature guitarist Ben Monder, drummer Joey Baron, and violinist Christian Howes in place of Rogers and Waits. The presence of Eckemoff, Alessi, and Gress on all of the material ensures continuity reigns throughout. One more difference is worth noting: in addition to the acoustic piano she always plays on her recordings, she augments it on the new set with Fender Rhodes, organ, and synthesizer.

While the album title might seem despairing, the music and performances assuredly aren’t. If anything, the spirit of the performances suggests the 2020 sessions were cause for celebration, even if reservedly felt, when the musicians were able to assemble and create music together again. Like Better Than Gold and Silver, the tracks on the new release see Eckemoff again setting verses from Biblical Psalms to music; in contrast to the earlier release, which presented ten settings in vocal and instrumental versions, I Am a Stranger in This World is an all-instrumental affair, though each composition’s melodies originated from the words in the Psalms.

For every project, she gathers around herself a small number of musicians who then wholly share their artistry with her for two or three days. A community feel informs the music, as if to suggest a family of sorts formed during the brief time of the project’s creation. Always in charge, Eckemoff embroiders the performances with filigreed piano patterns and occasionally steps forth to solo; Alessi might be the MVP here, however, given how often his acrobatic horn leads the ensemble with authority (hear the dynamic turn he takes in “Make Haste to Help Me,” for example). The ever-imaginative Rogers is no slouch in the soloing department either, and Gress and Waits take to her music like ducks to water, the two solidly grounding the performances yet also playing freely in the space the compositions provide. She excels at structuring her writing so that each piece is branded with a distinctive character yet also allows ample room for the musicians to individually stamp themselves on the performance.

Opening on a high, “As Chaff Before the Wind” alternates between serene, lightly swinging, and majestic episodes, with the assured voicings of Alessi gradually giving way to a lyrical statement by Rogers. While many a performance is delivered at a relaxed tempo, “Keep Not Your Silence” ups the intensity ante with a muted Alessi, chiming Rogers, and organ-wielding Eckemoff driving the band. The presence of Howes’ violin separates the title track from those preceding it, as does the stately classical tone of the musicians’ execution. Similarly, the tinkle of Fender Rhodes adds to the romantic splendour of “Truth in His Heart.” To a greater degree than on her other releases, a pronounced blues feeling informs a number of pieces, including “Lighten My Eyes” and the rollicking “I Shall Not Want,” and some performances exude a freer feel than the Eckemoff norm (see the extended central section in “At Midnight I Will Rise”).

“Like Rain Upon the Mown Grass” and “Every Beast of the Field” stretch out to sixteen and nineteen minutes, respectively, and it’s in these performances—both by the 2016 unit—where the impression of adventurous journeys methodically undertaken by travelers is conspicuously felt. Despite their extended duration, the pieces never drag when the compositions continually advance from one passage to another. With Eckemoff adding synthesizer atmosphere, Howes, Alessi, and Monder confidently guide the group through the episodic trek “Like Rain Upon the Mown Grass”; Howes and Alessi do much the same by co-leading the group through the many peaks and valleys of “Every Beast of the Field.”

Some thoughts by Gress about playing Eckemoff’s music are included in the release booklet, and they’re astute in pinpointing some of what makes her so special. “Yelena,” he says, “follows her own muse and seems to be uninfluenced by current trends in the music scene writ large … That the music she makes reflects her true self was, and is, inevitable.” He’s correct on all counts: there’s nothing calculatedly contrarian about Eckemoff’s nature, yet there’s no disputing her music is always marked by her distinctive sensibility. Her piano playing style likewise exemplifies her personality in the way jazz expression is always grounded in the classical training she received before embarking on her career as a jazz artist.

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Yelena Eckemoff: Adventures of the Wildflower
L&H Production

Each Yelena Eckemoff release is both deeply informed by her artistic persona and the musical partners she convenes for it. Adventures of the Wildflower, an ambitious two-CD affair, is no exception: she wrote, arranged, and plays piano on eighteen original compositions, created paintings for the package, fashioned the album concept, and wrote the texts for its narrative. Much of the recording’s personality, however, derives from the Finnish musicians recruited for it: saxophonist Jukka Perko, electric guitarist Jarmo Saari, vibraphonist Panu Savolainen, acoustic bassist Antti Lotjonen, and drummer Olavi Louhivuori. Adventures of the Wildflower is an Eckemoff production through and through, yet it’s also a unique statement because of the instrumentalists involved.

This time around, the narrative is the kind one could easily imagine used for a children’s storybook. As these things often do, the seed for the project emerged with some degree of serendipity when Eckemoff read in a magazine about the way plants communicate with each other (listeners of a certain age will be forgiven for thinking immediately of Stevie Wonder’s Journey Through The Secret Life of Plants from 1979). Chemical connections are made via air and soil, resulting in an interconnected community much like musicians interacting in an ensemble. For her story, the classically trained pianist tried to imagine the experience of a single plant, in this case a columbine flower named, yes, Columbine, within that community and its interactions with its neighbours. The titular adventures thus have to do with life, from birth to death, of said plant and observations of the teeming world around it. A quick scan of the track titles hints at the narrative content with references to weeding, drought, seasonal change, children, and creatures—dogs, mice, butterflies, hummingbirds, chickens, et al.

The music, on the other hand, is anything but childlike—even if a child’s sense of wonder can be gleaned from the performances. While Eckemoff brings a clearly defined vision to Adventures of the Wildflower, she’s also receptive to the tone colours and textures her accompanists make available. As is her custom, she provided them with extensive lead sheets for the August 2019 Helsinki sessions, but they imprinted themselves upon the material with their personalities. The musical plantlife, pardon the pun, blossoms under her direction and their engagement.

Saari also contributes theremin and glass harp to the recording, and in fact the former’s high-pitched warble is one of the first sounds that appears and thus helps establish the project’s broad palette. While Savolainen’s vibes, Perko’s saxes, Saari’s guitars, and Eckemoff’s piano are critical to the distinctive sound world cultivated in these performances, it’s more the collective tapestry that gives Adventures of the Wildflower its lush, emblematic character; Louhivuori and Lotjonen are likewise attentive and versatile players who enhance the charts with colouristic detail. Yes, Eckemoff is the leader, and her playing impresses as always (see her remarkable solo turn in “Dying”), but each participant is integral to the result, and a powerful synergy between the six is demonstrated throughout.

The release complements the others in her discography, yet it also differentiates itself from them in its greater textural emphasis. There’s an explorative openness in these performances that suggests the pianist loosened the reins more than usual to allow her partners to boldly venture past notation. Being wholly instrumental, the pieces can be enjoyed on purely musical grounds or tied to their titles for a visual correlate. One can choose to appreciate “Dog Chasing a Mouse,” for instance, for its muscular groove and soprano sax-and-vibes trade-offs or for the way the instruments embody one animal in rapid pursuit of another.

At two hours, there’s lots to dig into, from the warm, breezy swing of “Weeding the Garden” to the serenading splendour of “Winter Slumber” and joyful, rather Parisian charm of “Butterflies,” and pleasures are plentiful. Consider, for example, the way the band’s playing majestically swells as “Rain” and “Home By the Fence” move toward their respective closes. A political theme underlies the story, however innocently child-like its presentation is on the surface. In Eckemoff’s own words, “I believe that nothing is more important than for all earthly beings to find a way to live together peacefully, next to each other in the same community. Characters of my story may have disagreements with each other, but in the end, they always find a way to coexist together on the same plot of land.” It’s a lesson worth imparting to children, but it’s also one capable of resonating across all age groups.

March 2021

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Yelena Eckemoff’s releases benefit from a number of things. To begin with, they’re highly personalized affairs, each one presenting not only her distinctive piano playing and compositions but also painted artwork and free verse poetry, each designed to enhance and bring clarity to the project theme. One of the major drawing cards of an Eckemoff recording has to do with her choice of collaborators, with each album featuring her and an ever-changing cast of top-tier musicians. Last year’s Colors, for example, paired the Moscow-born, North Carolina-based pianist with drummer Manu Katché, and previous releases have included Verneri Pohjola, Paul McCandless, Ben Monder, Mats Eilertsen, Peter Erskine, and others. She also regularly varies the number of players involved, with Colors a duo set and others featuring trio, quartet, and quintet groupings.

For Nocturnal Animals, she recruited double bassist Arild Andersen, a frequent collaborator, and drummers Jon Christensen and Thomas Strønen. Expanding on the standard piano trio format in such manner not only makes for an unusual and original sound but also exceptionally pleasurable listening. Typically, the piano leads in such a context, and so it does here, too; however, the interactions between the four are at such a high level of responsiveness that the playing field levels out. Yes, Eckemoff does provide the melodic thrust, and it’s her playing that most defines a piece’s character, but the constant interactions between the four creates the impression of a band of equals.

Issued on her own L&H Production imprint as a double-CD release and recorded over two days in April 2018 at Rainbow Studios in Oslo, Norway, Nocturnal Animals presents fourteen musical impressions of night-time creatures. Conceiving an album with a particular theme in mind isn’t a new thing for the pianist, with previous projects having centered on a variety of subjects, including the desert and the Biblical psalms. Using nocturnal creatures as a creative springboard was a clever move, given the abundance of animals from which to choose. Eckemoff tackled the challenge with characteristic seriousness by imagining what the first-person experience of each creature might be like and fashioning material in concert with it.

Her classical background (she studied piano at Moscow State Conservatory) lends her playing a dignified and subtly aristocratic (though not stuffy) quality, while her love for jazz infuses it with an insistent rhythmic flow. She’s no maximalist intent on overwhelming the listener with a barrage of notes, but neither is she a minimalist. Her playing appears as an imaginative stream of invention that gives her partners ample material to respond to. She and Andersen act as a tag-team of sorts, the bassist shadowing her and assuming a prominent role as both melodist and soloist. Nocturnal Animals is also elevated by the Christensen-Strønen combination. Rather than adding excessive density, the two generate a rich array of drums, cymbals, and percussion sounds. Without putting too fine a point on it, Strønen provides a deferential, clutter-free foundation which Christensen adds to with tom-tom accents and cymbal flourishes. The cumulative result is a multi-layered music where multiple things are happening at once, and the listener is never less than engaged.

Many of the pieces demonstrate a clear connection to the animals for which they’re titled. “Fox” stands out immediately for its muscular swing, Eckemoff’s approach in keeping with a text that portrays the animal as one born to run and light on its feet; propelled by a syncopated, chords-based theme, the tune gives all concerned a nice opportunity to loosen up and indulge their rhythmic selves. “Grizzly Bear,” on the other hand, naturally plods at a slower tempo and with a heavier step, whereas percussive rattling emerges during “Rattlesnake,” which advances in something of a sidewinding slither. During “Wolf,” it’s easy to visualize the creature stalking a large herd of deer when the playing advances with patient deliberation, and the adventurous treatment given “Hedgehog” suits the rabble-rousing persona of the animal presented in Eckemoff’s poem. While the playing’s a little bit funky in keeping with the slinky “Lynx,” “Firefly” presents a graceful treatment rich in percussive sparkle, with piano trills and runs suggesting the creature’s movements. In a few cases, surprises arise: one mightn’t, for example, anticipate music so stately and lyrical from a piece called “Toad.”

One production error does confuse matters slightly, specifically that the track durations listed on the package’s back cover don’t match the ones shown inside the booklet, the latter being the correct ones—a minor glitch that has no impact on the project otherwise. Eckemoff is a truly remarkable artist, one possessing a seemingly bottomless well of energy and ideas (Nocturnal Animals is apparently her fifteenth release in ten years). In featuring her playing, compositions, artwork, and poetry, this latest collection testifies to the incredible creative resources she consistently draws upon and makes the release, eighty-seven explorative minutes in total, resonate all the more memorably for being so personalized.

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Most of Yelena Eckemoff’s recordings feature the pianist playing in ensemble contexts, be it quartet, sextet, or otherwise, and consequently the performances on those releases share their focus between her and the other musicians; of course Eckemoff does solo on those dates, but a generous amount of space is ceded to her accompanists. On the duo recording Colors, however, she’s the dominant voice, and as such the recording emphasizes her playing to a larger degree than usual. Though this puts more pressure on her as a soloist, she doesn’t shrink from the task, and rather than tightening up, her playing feels relaxed, ebullient, and even at times gregarious. Much like on previous releases, her classical training is omnipresent as a foundation, yet while that dimension is present on the album (see the refined “Violet” as an example), her classical-influenced technique is downplayed on Colors, the recording instead emphasizing an informality and spontaneity in approach that’s not unwelcome.

Much the same could be said about the playing of her partner, Manu Katché, who first came to prominence in the ‘80s and ‘90s when his drumming elevated recordings by Robbie Robertson, Peter Gabriel, Sting, Jan Garbarek, and others. On Colors, he largely devotes himself to following Eckemoff’s lead and adjusting his playing to suit the directions she takes, with an improvised feel infusing the compositions (all credited to Eckemoff). Katché’s a distinctive stylist who can’t help but brand a performance with his personality, but on this date he achieves a well-considered balance between imposition and self-effacement.

Interestingly, while the subject matter has to do with colours, the album trajectory traces life’s stages, from birth and childhood on through first love, adulthood, and the immanence of death. Consistent with that idea, “White,” the unmarked purity of its state redolent of snow, milk, and the blank slate of a newborn, introduces the set with Katché wielding brushes and Eckemoff at her most playful and explorative. The subsequent “Pink,” on the other hand, represents the next stage, the colour in this case associated with the rosy lips of someone leaning over the child and the pink light of the morning coming through the window. In these tracks and elsewhere, the drummer provides a dextrous and ever-evolving yet always solid grounding for the leader’s ruminations and flights of fancy. As the recording advances, our protagonist experiences nature’s verdant abundance (“Green”), romantic disappointment (“Indigo”), the thrill of a night at the disco (“Red”), the pleasure of a good wine (“Bordeaux”), and, inevitably, life’s gradual slowing (“Grey”).

Classical and jazz are the dominant poles of reference on an Eckemoff release, but on this one her playing ventures into blues and even rock’n’roll. In one of the album’s more surprising moves, “Orange” celebrates the joy of youth with the drummer backing the pianists’s rousing lines with a muscular backbeat, while “Indigo” calls forth a soulful, R&B-styled treatment. Colors isn’t without moments of reflection, however, as illustrated by the lyrical, introspective ballad “Blue,” its playful central episode aside.

Her releases are always highly personalized affairs, and this one’s no exception. It comes with a mini-booklet containing colour photographs of the musicians and her professional-calibre oil paintings; also included are texts by the pianist, one for each of the album’s pieces. Recorded over two days in May 2017 in France, the release appears on her own L & H Production label and is eighty minutes in total. At fourteen tracks, it’s a tad long—twelve might have been a better number—but no one will ever come away from an Eckemoff release feeling shortchanged.

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The more recent Eckemoff release of the two symbolizes a dramatic departure from her customary all-instrumental approach, though not completely: Better Than Gold and Silver is a two-disc affair, with the first featuring ten vocal-based settings and the second instrumental versions of same. As noteworthy is the subject matter: the project is the first in a planned series of releases featuring settings of Biblical psalms, with the lyrics word-for-word texts taken from the King James Bible and voiced, in this installment, by tenor Tomás Cruz, a graduate of the New England Conservatory of Music, and mezzo-soprano Kim Mayo, a colleague of Cruz’s from the Conservatory. Yet as foundational as the religious dimension is, Better Than Gold and Silver still qualifies as a jazz project, albeit one of a slightly formal kind, as opposed to Christian vocal music; one might think of it as a hybrid recording that combines the sensibilities of jazz musicianship with the stately presentation of sacred vocal texts. Jazz stalwarts were called upon to join the pianist and vocalists, in this case trumpeter Ralph Alessi, guitarist Ben Monder, violinist Christian Howes, double bassist Drew Gress, and drummer Joey Baron. Think of Better Than Gold and Silver as a new addition to religion-inspired jazz works that include Coltrane’s A Love Supreme and Ellington’s Sacred Concerts.

Whether delivered by vocalist or instrumentalist, Eckemoff’s melodies are strong throughout, so much so you might find yourself hearing echoes of them once the recording’s over. The vocal half begins strongly with Cruz’s pure voice and clear enunciation helping to distinguish “Psalm 131,” which also impresses for the sympathetic accompaniment the others provide when concise turns by Monder, Howes, and Alessi extend the plaintive character of the vocal. Appealing contrast declares itself immediately thereafter when Mayo invests the lively “Psalm 119 Teth” with a soulful performance, her vocal also complemented by solos, this time by Alessi and Gress. Typically the vocalists appear in separate songs, but they’re both featured during the slow, blues-inflected “Psalm 119 Lamed” where their strongly contrasting voices blend nicely (jazz singer Jackie Gage also contributes to the cut). Particularly memorable is “Psalm 147” for the ponderous, piano-sprinkled intro and the stately melodic lines voiced in unison by Cruz and Howes.

Eckemoff clearly gave considerable thought to precisely where the vocal and instrumental elements would appear in a given arrangement; the two often occur in sequence, but they sometimes double up (hear, for example, in “Psalm 110” the trumpeter play the vocal melody in unison with Mayo before stepping forth for a punchy solo) and often interweave. The songs are, as a result, richly layered and intricately structured yet never feel excessively complex, and the integration of the different resources and the balance achieved between them is realized with immense skill by the leader. The pianist takes a number of elegant, artfully constructed solos but also cedes generous solo space to her partners.

It might be tempting to think of the instrumental disc as a bonus add-on of secondary importance. In fact, it proves as rewarding as the first for the simple fact that the melodies sung by the vocalists in the first half are handled in the second by instrumentalists, and as a result the listener is treated to extended episodes featuring the players operating in front-line soloist modes. If anything, the slightly longer second half allows one to appreciate all the more how much in tune the musicians are with one another, as well as their advanced artistry as individuals. Judging from the inspired playing on “Psalm 119 Teth,” “Psalm 110,” and the muscularly swinging “Psalm 58,” to cite three examples, it certainly sounds as if Alessi, Howes, Monder, and Eckemoff enjoyed digging into the vocal melodies and maximizing the tunes’ harmonic potential. Similar to disc one, a highlight in the second part is the thirteen-minute rendering of “Psalm 147,” with Howes and Monder voicing the themes and Eckemoff decorating the performance with trills and descending runs.

It also would be wrong to interpret her decision to release a religion-themed album as an attempt to convert listeners; Better Than Gold and Silver is instead a 142-minute expression of deep personal belief that she’s long wanted to share. Consistent with that position, she concludes her detailed liner notes with the hope that her settings “will reach the hearts of all listeners, no matter whether their interests lie in [the] religious sphere or strictly the musical domain—or both.”

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Yelena Eckemoff approaches her musical productions much like a congenial film director. To bring out the best performances, she first selects exceptionally talented ‘actors’ who, having been provided with clear instruction (read: charts), require a modicum of instruction. Eckemoff directs with a nurturing hand, intent on ensuring that everyone involved is comfortable, and she ‘acts,’ too, though always in such a way that she’s never less or more dominant than the others. Yet while their contributions are critical to the project’s outcome, Eckemoff, as composer, producer, arranger, and pianist, is clearly the one in charge. And her involvement extends into other areas, too: she composes texts that serve as guideposts for the compositions and displays her professional-calibre paintings in the release packages.

Her recent Desert is representative of the approach. For this date, she convened Oregon’s Paul McCandless (oboe, English horn, soprano sax, bass clarinet), Norwegian bassist Arild Andersen, and drummer Peter Erskine (Weather Report, Steps Ahead), three players with decades of recordings and gigs behind them (Andersen and Erskine teamed up for the first time, incidentally, on Eckemoff’s 2013 release Glass Song). They’re seasoned pros who, presented with charts, can deliver a credible performance the first time through, and consistent with that each of the recording’s eleven tracks plays like a live take the four laid down soon after familiarizing themselves with it; as a result, the music’s characterized by freshness and spontaneity. Erskine’s comment after the two-day recording session ended is telling: “Yelena brings out the best in all of us.”

The leader herself is a distinctive player, a pianist who brings a very personalized style to the jazz piano tradition. Whereas another’s is heavily informed by the blues or R&B, her playing is strongly influenced by years of classical training, which makes for a generally elegant and lyrical result. Perhaps the best way of stating it is to say that she embroiders the material (see “Garden of Eden” as an especially good illustration) while also providing a secure foundation for her partners; rarely sitting out, she’s instead omnipresent, though never overbearingly. Her solos are typically arresting for the way they weave intricate patterns without losing a fundamental sense of swing.

It’s a concept album of sorts that sees Eckemoff and company relocating to the Arabian desert and evoking in musical form the sights, sounds, and rhythms of the setting. True to form, she composed texts for the compositions, in this case a short story for the opening “Bedouins” and poems for the ones following. In the story, a Westerner, having lost his wife and daughter, decamps to Arabia where he stays with a Bedouin family, hoping to join it. Having determined that his guest’s a better writer than desert worker, the family patriarch invites the visitor to stay but in a writing capacity, the poems displayed after the story presumably samples of his creative output. Eckemoff’s never visited the Arabian Desert (she was born and raised in Moscow and emigrated to the United States in 1991) and the album was recorded in Hollywood, California, but that hardly deterred her from imagining what it would be like to gaze upon sand dunes and the slow treks of caravans.

All four musicians are integral to Desert‘s tapestries. Erskine is a wellspring of percussive imagination, Andersen unfailing, McCandless indispensable, and Eckemoff her usual attentive, supportive self. Though McCandless is the one most responsible for articulating the melodic character of a given piece, each player’s contributions are critical; in augmenting his drumming with percussion, for example, Erskine does much to help evoke the mystery of the Arabian locale (see “Oasis,” for example). Interplay is at a consistently high level, and solo episodes emerge naturally from the ensemble; Eckemoff favours slow to medium tempos, which also allows for a relaxed, loose feel that encourages improvisation and strengthens the impression of live interaction. In a typical piece, the musicians follow a road map of sorts that provides direction but that’s also not constricting creatively, and free episodes even in a few cases arise. While Desert is by default jazz, it also could be labeled World music for its aromatic fusion of Arabic music, jazz, and classical.

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Yelena Eckemoff Quintet: Blooming Tall Phlox 
L&H Production

Yelena Eckemoff Quintet: In the Shadow of a Cloud
L&H Production

Every artist’s story is unique, though the evidence suggests Yelena Eckemoff’s is more unusual than most. As a young girl growing up in Moscow, she received extensive training in piano and music theory, studied with some of the country’s greatest teachers (Anna Pavlovna Kantor, for example, who also taught Evgeny Kissin), and, after eventually acquiring her Master’s Degree in piano performance and pedagogy, taught piano herself when not playing concerts and writing music. Her life underwent a dramatic change in 1991, however, when she, with her husband, emigrated to the US and subsequently self-released albums of classical, vocal, folk, and religious music. Another pivotal moment arrived in 2009 when she recorded her first jazz album, Cold Sun, with drummer Peter Erskine and bassist Mads Vinding, and in the years since a remarkable string of releases has appeared featuring Eckemoff working with Mats Eilertsen, Marilyn Mazur, Mark Feldman, Arild Andersen, Billy Hart, and others.

While many of her releases are trio dates, two recent small ensemble sets offer a fascinating study in comparison and contrast. The similarities first: both are double-CD affairs that complement Eckemoff’s compositions with poems (one per composition) and paintings by the pianist; both also appear on L&H Production, the label she co-founded and the central outlet for her music. Blooming Tall Phlox and In the Shadow of a Cloud are different, however, in other respects: Eckemoff’s joined by young Finnish lions on the former (trumpeter Verneri Pohjola, vibraphonist Panu Savolainen, bassist Antti Lötjönen, drummer Olavi Louhivuori) whereas New York musicians appear on the latter (woodwinds player Chris Potter, electric guitarist Adam Rogers, double bassist Drew Gress, drummer Gerald Cleaver); conceptually, the two releases differ, too: recorded in Finland in 2013, Blooming Tall Phlox draws for inspiration from scents from Eckemoff’s Russian childhood; In the Shadow of a Cloud deals with evocation also, though in this case it’s places and experiences associated with the life she left behind when she emigrated to North Carolina. Given such details, it shouldn’t surprise that stylistically the tone is different on the recordings, with Blooming Tall Phlox vividly impressionistic in contrast to the more directly melodic and robust In the Shadow of a Cloud.

As also should be obvious, both projects are intensely personal in nature; Eckemoff is anything but a hands-off producer. Yet despite the extreme degree of control she exercises over the recording projects, she doesn’t micro-manage those who accompany her on the sessions. She selects her personnel with care, knowing that once the players are clued in to the project and familiarized with the material she’s written for it, they’ll rise to the occasion and put their own personal stamp on it.

Her playing is distinct, too. Unlike many a pianist who during a formative period absorbs jazz’s traditions in the hope of gradually joining the club, Eckemoff came to jazz in circumlocutory manner, with many years of committed classical playing preceding the shift. As a result, her playing in a jazz context is distinguished by a refined touch that bolsters the music’s distinctive blend (Rogers astutely notes, “Yelena’s music is … different from a normal jazz record because it’s more through-composed, but I wouldn’t describe it as being a ‘classical-jazz’ hybrid record, because it sounds more like she’s assimilated these influences and is expressing them in an already very processed way, processed in a really good way.”) Interestingly, her playing doesn’t dazzle the listener with ecstatic expression; instead, she weaves herself into the performance, her contributions always mindful of the compositional structure in play. She’s a thoughtful player, in other words, who doesn’t feel the need to dominate the proceedings but instead tastefully enhance it.

In keeping with its olfactory theme, Blooming Tall Phlox subdivides into two parts, “Summer Smells” and “Winter Smells,” the song titles in each section directly referencing the memory trace Eckemoff drew upon for their creation. The material’s impressionistic character is established immediately when Louhivuori sprinkles the title track’s intro with percussive bells and cymbal shadings, the pianist following his lead with her own textural contributions. The compositional shape thereafter comes into focus with Pohjola’s entrance, as Lötjönen anchors the group and Savolainen adds his own bright flourishes. That somewhat metre-free opening is nicely followed by “Apples Laid Out On the Floor,” which, powered by the bassist’s walking and the drummer’s flow, swings by comparison and boasts rousing solos by the leader, vibraphonist, and bassist. Among the strongest pieces are “Fish Fried On Open Fire,” due to a wistful theme voiced with conviction by Pohjola and strong support by Louhivuori, and “Talks Over Hot Tea,” thanks to some of the trumpeter’s boldest playing and an uplifting performance by the quintet. Elsewhere, a subtle hint of “Someday My Prince Will Come” is intimated by the melodic progression of “Clementines and Candies on Christmas Tree,” while a trace of R&B sneaks into the relaxed swing of “Aunt Galya’s Perfume.”

The five deliver strong ensemble performances throughout, each one emblematic of attentive listening and sensitive connection. The impression left is of group interplay where each player’s contributions are integral. Do the performances replicate in musical form the scents associated with a bread store, pine needles, wildflower meadows, and an aunt’s perfume? As much, perhaps, as they can when instrumental playing’s involved; at the very least, one can say that Eckemoff’s settings are evocative, especially when Louhivuori functions as percussionist as much as drummer and when Pohjola, muted and otherwise, and Savolainen consistently bring rich texture to the playing.

On In the Shadow of a Cloud, the Finnish musicians’ American counterparts—woodwinds and guitar replacing the trumpet and vibes as lead voices—prove to be as strong a fit for Eckemoff’s music; in fact, the fit might be even better for the way their performances lend her compositions such striking immediacy and help the music communicate so forcefully. As mentioned, the release shares with Blooming Tall Phlox a nostalgic dimension, though this time the scent-based concept expands to memories of places and things experienced during her life in Russia. The playing is so seamless, it’s hard to believe that the sessions for the date were the first time the five had played together, even if Eckemoff’s collaborators had performed together in various permutations before the December 2016 recording date. All five acquit themselves admirably, though special mention must be made of Potter, whose contributions stand out for the many timbres his tenor and soprano saxophones, flute, and bass clarinet bring to the material.

Like Blooming Tall Phlox, a number of pieces stand out as particularly memorable, the opening title track certainly one. In a full-bodied, vibrato-tinged tenor, Potter voices the pleading eight-note theme first, after which it’s repeated by Eckemoff and Rogers, each partner contrapuntally shadowing another’s utterance and sometimes voicing it in unison. Whereas Cleaver and Gress provide a free-floating base in this piece for the others’ musings, their grounding is solidly defined in the subsequent “Saratovsky Bridge,” which again sees Potter clarifying the material’s shape with a forceful articulation of its melodies and delivering a muscular solo as well. Joining him on the front-line are Rogers and Eckemoff, the former opting for elegant, abrasion-free fluidity and the latter enriching the pieces with solos ever connected to the composition out of which they grow.

Not surprisingly, the performances often convey in musical form the tone of the composition as suggested by its title. The relaxed flow of “Waters of Tsna River” is conveyed not only by Potter’s flute and Eckemoff’s lightly swinging solo but by Cleaver’s confident handling of the tune’s 5/4 time. “On the Motorboat,” on the other hand, moves briskly, the image quickly forming of Eckemoff and family cruising down the waterways on a gorgeous summer’s day and feeling the cool wind in their faces. With many of renderings delicate in tone (“Acorn Figurines,” on which the leader delivers one of her most appealing solos, and “Hammock Stories,” a lovely ballad featuring a strong thematic statement by Potter), the uptempo performances stand out for being modest in number. The second disc’s breezy opener “Picnic in the Oaks” sees Eckemoff and company digging into a bluesy, half-speed swing like they were born to it, with all four—Potter sitting this one out and Rogers stepping out forcefully in his absence—riffing memorably on the changes. More rhythmically emphatic is “Vision of a Hunt,” which also offers a rare sampling of Potter’s bass clarinet playing.

As full an Eckemoff portrait as these releases provide, they’re not the whole picture; no doubt she assumes a more dominant role as a player on the trio recordings than she does as a quintet member; one also expects that her playing figures even more prominently on Colors, her upcoming release with drummer Manu Katché. Blooming Tall Phlox and In the Shadow of a Cloud nonetheless provide a sterling survey of her artistry, especially when her talents as a musician, composer, producer, and conceptualist are showcased so thoroughly.

Ron Schepper for Textura
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