Yelena Eckemoff comes to us from Moscow, Russia, where she was born, raised, and educated in music. She now lives in North Carolina in the United States. She has now lived in the U.S. for over 30 years.

Ms. Eckemoff is a very unique and gifted pianist and composer. Add to that prolific, as she has released a multitude of albums, using a variety of different instrument formats and musicians. Her latest release, “I Am a Stranger Here Myself”, includes all original music by Yelena (inspired by biblical psalms), and she is accompanied by a literal who’s who of jazz greats: Nasheet Waits, Joey Baron, Ben Monder, Ralph Alessi, Adam Rogers, Christian Howes and Drew Gress. In her music, one can detect the richly harmonic and brooding music of the great Russian classical romantic composers as an influence. The album is released on her own L&H Productions label.

Yelena may be from Russia, but we claim her as one of our own here in the United States!