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Jazz Articles about Yelena Eckemoff
Yelena Eckemoff: Lions
by Tyran Grillo
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 ...
Continue ReadingYelena Eckemoff: Scenes From the Dark Ages
by Tyran Grillo
Yelena Eckemoff has long composed as though mapping weather rather than terrain, tracing pressure systems of mood and atmosphere while leaving strict pulse to others. Her music often moves with purpose yet refuses the easy certainties of groove, circling rhythm instead of kneeling before it. This has never felt like abstinence or austerity. It feels more like rhetoric. She addresses rhythm, engages with it, but rarely submits for the mere sake of doing so. That is why “Pilgrims," the opening ...
Continue ReadingYelena Eckemoff: Romance of the Moon
by Neri Pollastri
Yelena Eckemoff, prolifica e camaleontica compositrice russa da anni residente negli U.S.A., è usa mutare con frequenza collaboratori, adattando le proprie composizioni al loro stile e alla loro cultura. Questo suo ultimo album, intitolato Romance of the Moon, sebbene sia ispirato alla poesia di Federico Garcia Lorca, è di fatto un lavoro “italiano," essendo realizzato nel nostro Paese (in particolare, registrato a nel giugno del 2023 a Mantova e poi missato a Udine negli studi Artesuono di Stefano Amerio) assieme ...
Continue ReadingYelena Eckemoff: Romance of the Moon
by Doug Collette
Comparable to the rare and valuable likes of a first edition book worth treasuring, Yelena Eckemoff's Romance of the Moon is no small achievement. The keyboardist/composer creates music as vivid as the images in her own paintings that adorn the inside and out of the CD package, all of which graphics (as well as those in the enclosed booklet) appear in a glossy finish. And that corresponds to the polish of the production of a baker's dozen compositions ...
Continue ReadingYelena Eckemoff: Romance of the Moon
by Tyran Grillo
With Romance of the Moon, Yelena Eckemoff descends further into the symbolic night, carrying Federico García Lorca's poetry as a living grammar in her heart. This suite of 13 compositions does not illustrate the poems so much as converse with them, answering their obsessions with music that listens as intently as it speaks. Lorca's moons, bells, animals, and silences find a second life here, translated into pulse and pause. Eckemoff assembles a band whose collective intelligence feels instinctive ...
Continue ReadingYelena Eckemoff And Cory Smythe: Imagination Unbound
by Doug Collette
Yelena Eckemoff and Cory Smythe have configured mirror images in music that reflect global mindsets of race, gender and class in the wake of COVID lockdowns and in the midst of climate change (among other controversies). The former postulates an insular existence populated only by a single individual and a sole figure with whom he finds empathy, while the latter formulates a world vision from a single point of view scanning the boundaries of culture(s). In keeping with the various ...
Continue ReadingYelena Eckemoff: Lonely Man and His Fish
by Tyran Grillo
After a run of emotionally expansive albums, pianist and composer Yelena Eckemoff once again pivots without losing her center. Reinvention has become part of her artistic language, and here it arrives with a new cast and a story told in patient detail. Kirk Knuffke appears on cornet, Masaru Koga on a flute modified with a shakuhachi mouthpiece, Ben Street on double and electric bass, and Eric Harland on drums and percussion. Together they inhabit a two-disc narrative that follows the ...
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