Jazz Articles about Yelena Eckemoff

About Yelena Eckemoff

Album Review

After two expansive collections that gathered large ensembles and formidable names, Yelena Eckemoff chooses subtraction. Desert arrives as a deliberate narrowing of the horizon, a journey defined not by accumulation but by exposure. Joined by Paul McCandless on an assortment of reeds and winds, Arild Andersen on bass, and Peter Erskine on drums and percussion, Eckemoff steps into a terrain where every gesture is magnified by space. What emerges is music that feels windswept and arid, an austere and sharply ...

Album Review

Yelena Eckemoff: Desert

by Mark Sullivan
June 1, 2018

Pianist/composer Yelena Eckemoff was born in Russia and in 2018 lives in North Carolina--neither location suggests a desert theme. But Eckemoff became fascinated by the Arabian Desert, producing not only music but also prose stories connecting the compositions to each other, as well as poetry and paintings (including the album's cover image). Her albums are usually organized around a theme. This one is unusual in having a musical style directly associated with it: so much of this program combines Arabic ...

Album Review

Yelena Eckemoff: Desert

Read "Desert" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan

by Dan McClenaghan
May 13, 2018

Pianist Yelena Eckemoff's backstory doesn't suggest the potential for a rise to the category of top level jazz pianist. But here she is, after emigrating to the U.S. from Russia with her husband--leaving her children (temporarily) and everything else (permanently) behind in 1991 to escape repression and to start a new life. Classically trained in her homeland, Eckemoff came to jazz relatively late. With persistence, talent, ambition, audacity and a seemingly unshakable optimism, she has navigated her way to the ...

Album Review

Yelena Eckemoff: In The Shadow Of A Cloud

Read "In The Shadow Of A Cloud" reviewed by Tyran Grillo

by Tyran Grillo
August 21, 2017

Following her successful quintet outing, Blooming Tall Phlox, pianist Yelena Eckemoff retains the ensemble's name while quietly reshaping its interior life, recalibrating the personnel for another generous two-disc statement. Joined this time by Chris Potter on reeds and flute, Adam Rogers on electric guitar, Drew Gress on double bass, and Gerald Cleaver on drums, Eckemoff unfurls a map of 14 new compositions that trace some of her most fluid and contemplative terrain yet. These pieces feel resolutely discovered, as though ...

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Album Review

Yelena Eckemoff: In The Shadow Of A Cloud

Read "In The Shadow Of A Cloud" reviewed by John Kelman

by John Kelman
August 14, 2017

She may rarely perform live in this context, but Yelena Eckemoff has managed to build, over just seven years and a mammoth eleven releases--including her second release of 2017, In the Shadow of a Cloud--a loyal and growing following in the jazz world. It's all the more remarkable for a multi-talented expat Russian pianist who began life in the classical world, and only entered the jazz world in 2010 with Cold Sun. But there's even more to marvel ...

Album Review

Yelena Eckemoff Quartet: Leaving Everything Behind

Read "Leaving Everything Behind" reviewed by Neri Pollastri

by Neri Pollastri
March 23, 2017

Continua a mostrare gusto, classe e capacità di scegliersi i compagni di avventura l'eclettica pianista russo-americana Yelena Eckemoff, la quale dopo album con partner nordeuropei -Glass Songs, in trio, e Everblue, in quartetto -realizza adesso questo lavoro con musicisti statunitensi. Rispetto al precedente CD cambia drasticamente anche il primo strumento solista -là il sassofono di Tore Brunborg -qua il violino di Mark Feldman. Alla ritmica, per non far rimpiangere Arild Andersen e Jon Christensen, troviamo uno storico protagonista ...

Album Review

Yelena Eckemoff: Blooming Tall Phlox

Read "Blooming Tall Phlox" reviewed by Tyran Grillo

by Tyran Grillo
January 23, 2017

For this quintet outing, pianist and composer Yelena Eckemoff is joined by Verneri Pohjola on trumpet and flugelhorn, Panu Savolainen on vibraphone, Antti Lotjonen on double bass, and Olavi Louhivuori on drums and percussion. Together they move through a sequence of 15 originals that feel less composed than remembered, as though the music were lifted from the air itself and gently given form. What emerges is a cabinet of scents, each one opened with care, each one releasing its own ...