When thinking of the grand scheme of things art is art is art. Consider the definition: it is created to express an emotion, art has qualities that cater to the senses, it involves imagination and the artist uses art to convey certain experiences and last but certainly not least it requires mastery and skills to do all these things.

Yelena Eckemoff has a new joint “Rosendals Garden,” that was inspired by a trip to Sweden. The album starts off with “ABBA Museum,” a nice swinging melody that tips the hat to Sweden’s super group. Let’s use all those definition prompts to tell you about Ms. Eckemoff: the week or so she spent in Sweden and the emotion she felt from the beauty of this Alpine country was enough to fill an album. The music has a bit of a pulse, so as to cater to your senses, rather than a flat dirge with no excitement.

The fact that she was able to make a big to-do about a trip shows her creativity and imagination so let’s skip to mastery and skills. Yelena was born in Moscow, Russia and her parents realized that she had musical skills when she began playing the piano by ear at 4. Moms was a professional pianist and became her first instructor. At 7 she was accepted into a school for the musically gifted, where she learned all the regular, boring primary school stuff as well as serious training in piano, music theory, music literature, harmony, conducting and composing. Eckemoff continued her education at Moscow State Conservatory and graduated with a Masters Degree in piano performance and teaching. Post graduation Yelena taught piano, gave solo performances and took classes at the Moscow Jazz Studio.

In 1991 she and the hubby emigrated to the U.S. but her musical career was put on hold as she raised her children. In 2009 she released her first Jazz album (“Cold Sun”) which received favorable reviews and was compared to music the ECM Jazz label was producing. From that point on Eckemoff was dropping about an album a year (23 so far) and I believe there’s plenty more to come. Enjoy! 🎼 @yelenamusik
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as always all posts in New Jointz/New Music are available on YouTube. Click on the link at the homepage for this and previous posts. 🎼

We have posted: “ABBA Museum,” the title track “Rosendals Garden,” “Gamla Stan,” “Country Orchard Cafe,” “Skansen Park,” “Ruins of Alvsborg,” “Storanden Nature Reserve” and “Stranvagen Pier.” *