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Yelena Eckemoff: Blooming Tall Phlox
by Dan Bilawsky
While the art of playing jazz qualifies as a multisensory experience, involving listening, touching, and seeing, it usually doesn't extend so far as to include the sense of smell. But that's not to say that a nose for scents has no place in musical and artistic spheres. If you need convincing, just look at Blooming Tall Phlox. For her tenth album in six years, pianist Yelena Eckemoff uses life and nature's bouquets as her muse. Her memory ...
Continue ReadingYelena Eckemoff Quartet: Leaving Everything Behind
by Mark Sullivan
Pianist/composer Yelena Eckemoff has restlessly explored a new theme with each new album, with a shifting group of musicians. The central event behind the album title Leaving Everything Behind was her departure from the Soviet Union in 1991. She and her husband came to the United States to start a new life, having literally left everything behind--even their children, left indefinitely with Eckemoff's parents until the couple could get established. To explore this theme she returned to older original material, ...
Continue ReadingYelena Eckemoff Quartet: Leaving Everything Behind
by Dave Wayne
With all of the worldwide hue and cry concerning immigration, precious little is said about the lives of immigrants themselves, the sacrifices they've made and the risks they've taken in order to start their lives anew; free of whatever hardships and oppression they endured in their native country. In the news, entire lives are boiled down to reports of another capsized boat in the Mediterranean, or another truckload of hopeful souls stopped at the border. Even those who immigrate legally ...
Continue ReadingYelena Eckemoff Quartet: Everblue
by Neri Pollastri
A due anni di distanza dall'ottimo Glass Song, realizzato in trio, la pianista Yelena Eckemoff, moscovita da oltre vent'anni stabilitasi negli Stati Uniti, allarga la formazione mantenendone l'impianto culturale: ai due monumenti della musica scandinava Arild Andersen e jon Christensen aggiunge infatti il sassofonista Tore Brunborg, per formare un quartetto dalla cifra meditativa e dal lirismo evocatico tipicamente nordici. Le composizioni di questo Everblue sono quasi tutte della pianista (fanno eccezione solo “Prism" e “Man," di Andersen), la ...
Continue ReadingYelena Eckemoff: Growing Into Jazz
by Mark Sullivan
Pianist/composer Yelena Eckemoff goes her own way. Since the 2010 release of Cold Sun on her own L&H Production label, she has produced a series of jazz recordings, all presenting original music, with an impressive array of renowned contemporary musicians. Our conversation mainly dealt with her recording career: making connections with other musicians, composing, and working in the studio as performer and producer. All About Jazz: When All About Jazz ran a Take Five article on you back ...
Continue ReadingYelena Eckemoff Quartet: Everblue
by Dan McClenaghan
In a quick follow-up to her masterful two CD set Lions, Russian-born and now North Carolina-based pianist Yelena Eckemoff offers up Everblue, the most “ECM Records-sounding" set not on that deservedly esteemed label. It is, rather, released on her own L&H Productions. The names of the sidemen on the date explain in part the ECM-like sound: saxophonist Tore Brunborg, bassist Arild Andersen, and drummer Jon Christensen, the Norwegian contingent, are all long time ECM Records artists, as leaders ...
Continue ReadingYelena Eckemoff Trio: Lions
by Dan McClenaghan
Yelena Eckemoff has a lot to say artistically. The Russian-born, classically-trained pianist--now home-based in North Carolina--has released eight jazz albums in the past nine years, sets that are packed to the digital rafters with close to the time limit for the CD format--in the 70-plus minute range. For Lions, the ideas spilled over onto two CDs, a ninety-four minutes of music that is--according to the set's drummer, Billy Hart--prophetic. Eckemoff has a way of working with themes, with ...
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