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Jazz Articles about Yelena Eckemoff

About Yelena Eckemoff

160

Album Review

Yelena Eckemoff: Blooming Tall Phlox

Read "Blooming Tall Phlox" reviewed by Mark Sullivan

by Mark Sullivan
January 23, 2017

You can look up the phlox flower online: there are 67 species, many of them fragrant. But none of the photographs or botanical classifications will tell you how it smells. For that we have pianist/composer Yelena Eckemoff's musical impressions here, along with a range of other smells recalled from her Russian childhood. When Eckemoff visited Finland and saw how much it reminded her of Russia she decided it was the best place to record an album about her Russian aroma ...

139

Album Review

Yelena Eckemoff: Blooming Tall Phlox

Read "Blooming Tall Phlox" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
December 16, 2016

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 ...

214

Album Review

Yelena Eckemoff Quartet: Leaving Everything Behind

Read "Leaving Everything Behind" reviewed by Mark Sullivan

by Mark Sullivan
July 5, 2016

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, ...

219

Album Review

Yelena Eckemoff Quartet: Leaving Everything Behind

Read "Leaving Everything Behind" reviewed by Dave Wayne

by Dave Wayne
July 4, 2016

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 ...

Album Review

Yelena Eckemoff Quartet: Everblue

Read "Everblue" reviewed by Neri Pollastri

by Neri Pollastri
March 24, 2016

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 ...

374

Catching Up With

Yelena Eckemoff: Growing Into Jazz

by Mark Sullivan
November 10, 2015

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 ...

307

Album Review

Yelena Eckemoff Quartet: Everblue

Read "Everblue" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan

by Dan McClenaghan
August 27, 2015

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 ...