Jazz Articles about Yelena Eckemoff

About Yelena Eckemoff

Radio & Podcasts

Jason Palmer, Charlie Rouse, Bennie Moten & More

by Joe Dimino
April 22, 2019

This week we start with the well-established and talented Russian-born jazz pianist Yelena Eckemoff and from there we continue to delve into new jazz releases with Jason Palmer and Native Soul. We profile the talented saxophonist Benjamin Boone with work off his CD The Poetry of Jazz Volume 2 featuring the late great poet Phillip Levine. We also keep that poetry mentality going strong with jazz singer Lisa Bernstein paying homage to Cecil Taylor on the one-year anniversary of his ...

Album Review

Yelena Eckemoff: Colors

by Tyran Grillo
March 28, 2019

There is a particular kind of courage in naming an album Colors. Not because the idea is simple, but because it is vast. To invoke color is to invoke perception itself, the mind's habit of sorting the world into tones and meanings, the heart's insistence that even the subtlest shade has a moral weight. With Colors, pianist and composer Yelena Eckemoff steps into that vastness alongside drummer Manu Katche, and together they build a two-person prism. After Eckemoff's recent runs ...

Album Review

Yelena Eckemoff/Manu Katché: Colors

by Mark Sullivan
March 21, 2019

Pianist/composer Yelena Eckemoff has produced a varied discography. But since her piano trio album Lions (L&H Production, 2015) she has tended towards larger ensembles. Leaving Everything Behind (L&H, 2016) and Desert (L&H, 2018) were both quartets; Blooming Tall Phlox (L&H, 2017) and In the Shadow of a Cloud (L&H, 2017) were quintets; and Better Than Gold And Silver (L&H, 2018) was a sextet (plus two vocalists for the vocal versions). So this is a surprising move: a duet with drummer ...

Album Review

Yelena Eckemoff / Manu Kache: Colors

Read "Colors" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan

by Dan McClenaghan
February 9, 2019

Pianist Yelena Eckemoff brings the top drummers into her recording sessions, whether it's Billy Hart on Lions (2014), or Peter Erskine on Glass Song (2012) and Desert (2015), or Jon Christensen for Everblue (2014)—all of these on her own L & H Production label. The year 2019 finds the prolific Eckemoff presenting her first duo album, Colors, a piano and drums affair with another topline partner sitting at the kit: Manu Katche, a distinctive drumming stylist and a ...

Album Review

Yelena Eckemoff: Better Than Gold and Silver

Read "Better Than Gold and Silver" reviewed by Mark Sullivan

by Mark Sullivan
November 11, 2018

Russian-born pianist/composer Yelena Eckemoff began setting verses from the Bible's Book of Psalms shortly after her conversion to Christianity, even before her emigration to the United States. But she waited until she had considerable experience working with jazz musicians before attempting these jazz arrangements. The first disc in this double disc set presents settings with two vocalists, tenor Tomás Cruz and mezzo-soprano Kim Mayo, accompanied by a remarkable band: trumpeter Ralph Alessi, guitarist Ben Monder, violinist Christian Howes, bassist Drew ...

Album Review

Yelena Eckemoff: In The Shadow Of A Cloud

Read "In The Shadow Of A Cloud" reviewed by Neri Pollastri

by Neri Pollastri
October 5, 2018

Continua la ricca vena creativa della pianista e compositrice russa Yelena Eckemoff, di formazione classica ma dedita al jazz dal suo arrivo negli U.S.A., nel 1991. Questa vena si concretizza in una fitta serie di album (l'ultimo di cui ci siamo occupati è Leaving Everything Behind, del 2016) registrati con formazioni sempre diverse e ogni volta composte da musicisti di altissimo livello. Stavolta il gruppo che realizza questo doppio CD è un quintetto, con una ritmica tra le ...

Album Review

Yelena Eckemoff: Better Than Gold and Silver

Read "Better Than Gold and Silver" reviewed by Tyran Grillo

by Tyran Grillo
September 29, 2018

Some albums attempt to explain sacred text. Others adorn, elevate, or dramatize it. Better Than Gold and Silver does something rarer. It listens. It waits. It receives. Yelena Eckemoff does not set the Psalms of David to music so much as she attends to them, as though all that remains is to hear what still trembles in their wake. The result is not doctrine rendered audible, but scripture softened by silence, memory, and breath. Belief here is not asserted. It ...