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Lions CD art

Tyran Grillo for All About Jazz

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Pianist Yelena Eckemoff, a melodic marvel whose gift for atmosphere has been apparent from the beginning, has never felt comfortable settling into a single definition. Rooted in classicalism yet never bound by its strictures, she has carved a singular path through the world of jazz, guided by a restless imagination that treats genre as porous terrain rather than fenced land. Her music arises from a place where labels dissolve and instinct takes over, a place recognized immediately by tender-minded musicians who understand that sound is older than taxonomy. In this sense, Lions stands as one of her most unbound creations to date. Though released in 2015, it still oversees the pride with variegated authority, a work whose presence has not dimmed with time but ripened.

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Ingo J. Biermann for Nordische Musik

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The work is both personal and metaphorical, easy to understand and immediate as well as multi-layered, and in the ambitious connection with the poems in the booklet to each piece, ultimately also cross-media in the approach. »LIONS« is an album that stimulates countless listening sessions with countless ideas and masterful interaction and, with each of the 14 pieces, provides new and fascinating perspectives on the classically popular world of piano trio jazz.

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Vittorio Lo Conte for Music Zoom

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In various trio engravings, Russian pianist Yelena Eckemoff has changed sideman, adding new colors to her music. In this recent outing the inspiration came from the bassist Arild Andersen, who had ordered a bass with the carved lion on the neck. It ignated a spark that led to the different compositions, the cover page and […]

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Witty for Amazon.de

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Her earlier works – all of them small jewels, undisputed – were very much influenced by her compositional concept; she leaves LIONS exactly the improvisational freedom that her fellow musicians Arid Andersen: bass; Billy Hart: drums need to forge from this double album a neclace of pearls in lushest splendor. What was announced with A Touch of Radiance already, was accomplished here.

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Robert Shore for Jazzwise

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Moscow-born, classically trained pianist Yelena Eckemoff displays multiple and multimedia talents on this double-disc release: she composed all the music, wrote poems, reprinted in the accompanying booklet, corresponding to each of the 14 tracks, and created the painting that features on the album cover. ..It’s a charming, smartly executed suite of music, strong on atmospheric scene-setting and shimmering, impressionistic detail, with plenty of beguiling melodic material.

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Robert Ratajczak for Long Play

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Lions” is another step forward in the career of an exceptional artist whose reputation gets better with each successive album, aspiring to the title of one of the most interesting jazz pianists overseas. Even before the release of this album the trio Yelena Eckemoff had an opportunity to present the program at the famous New York jazz club Birdland, meeting with an exceptionally warm welcome. In the music filling the album, besides her beautiful soul, we find also what is so difficult to achieve in many piano trios, namely to achieve the perfect balance between compromise convincing composition and structure of the loose interaction and improvisation. Interpretations artfully prepared for the album composition, extensive use of color and texture, making them extremely easy to read and full of space. A wonderful album!

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Andy Boeckstaens for London Jazz News

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Sphinx is one of Eckemoff’s loveliest creations, yet the protagonist is locked in an unbearable limbo. “What use is it for me to be immortal if I am a stone statue?” she asks. There is a rare vigour to Joining the Pride, in which the lioness is buoyed by the support of her partner, but in an unexpected twist the lion is usurped by a younger model (“Oh my changing heart!”) Towards the end – during Ode to Innocence – the lioness asserts that “I am free from guilt,” and in the concluding Ode to Strength the storyteller is returned – again on a flock of birds – to the human world. She cannot surrender her other incarnation completely, and retains the lioness’s heart. It’s a charming concept, and very beautifully played.

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James Tremblay for Amazon.com

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As I sit and listen to LIONS for the first time I cannot help but think to myself, “How does an artist continually sound fresh, continually add new flavors to the music and continue to create a completely ethereal and all-enveloping soundstage?” Yelena is one such artist. With every release, and this one is an oft wished for two-disc set, she paints a number of smaller pictures that come together as a priceless larger one. LIONS, and even though it almost seems impossible, finds me certain that Yelena has topped herself yet again.

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Carol Banks Weber for AXS

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Yelena Eckemoff Trio’s Lions is a long but comprehensive look at animals in the wild with human touches, a classical-jazz soundtrack that goes beyond the superficial, intermission grabs for attention and seeks out the feelings beneath the eerily accurate movements. For the most part, Eckemoff more than survives the wild; she civilizes it.

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Dan McClenaghan for All About Jazz

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Lions sounds like Yelena Eckemoff letting go, following her muse with a focused fervor. The music—structured gorgeousness in the embrace of the improvisational elan of Andersen and Hart—is Yelena’s strongest statement to date, a flawless and beguiling work of art.

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