Yelena Eckemoff: Better Than Gold and Silver

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 is inhabited.

The Psalms have always been both communal and intimate, sung aloud yet born in solitude. Eckemoff approaches them obliquely, honoring that duality. The text remains intact, carried with luminous restraint by vocalists Tomas Cruz and Kim Mayo, yet the real narrative unfolds beneath the syllables. This is music that traces the emotional terrain lingering behind each verse, the unspoken ache and assurance that remain once language has done its work. Jazz becomes an act of inner hearing, melody unfolding like sustained attention, harmony behaving like conscience, rhythm shaped by patience rather than momentum.

Across the album's generous span, the compositions reveal themselves as carefully architected yet quietly alive. Themes surface, fracture, and return with an altered understanding. Instruments take turns stepping forward, speaking, confessing, bearing the melodic thread for a time before releasing it back into the collective. Nothing is decorative.

Eckemoff's piano rests at the center of this gathering with gravity. Her touch suggests both rigor and mercy, a mind that knows where it is going and a spirit willing to pause or yield. Improvisations rise and dissolve into moments of near stillness, where time loosens and sound becomes a form of attention. Surrounding her is a band chosen not for spectacle but for discernment. Ralph Alessi's trumpet speaks with clarity and restraint. Ben Monder's electric guitar offers texture and tenderness. Christian Howes's violin brings a singing grain to the ensemble. Drew Gress's double bass grounds the music with quiet resolve. Joey Baron's drums shape space as much as movement.

"Psalm 131" unfolds in slow motion, cultivating humility with deliberate care. The psalmist's refusal of pride becomes a musical posture rather than a declaration. Lush without excess, flowing without self-indulgence, the piece embodies a faith that does not shout its certainty but rests within it. The music gives thanks without spectacle, praise without conquest, offering an unwavering trust shaped by restraint over triumph.

Several pieces draw from Psalm 119, the longest and most intricately structured of the Psalms. Eckemoff selects from it individual meditations, each one a facet of devotion examined under a different light. "Teth" delights in God's law with reverent curiosity. "Lamed" becomes a dialogue, faith spoken and answered in real time. "Jod" clings to tender mercies with quiet persistence. "Zain" praises the perfection of divine precepts without turning them into abstraction. These are not theological arguments but lived interpretations, the personal and the universal held together without strain.

It is in "Nun" that the album's heart opens most fully. Here, the chambers of the music fill with breath, righteousness, and deference. Cruz's voice carries the scripture with gentility and grace, neither dramatizing nor diminishing its weight. Beneath him, Eckemoff's piano moves in chromatic waves. Baron's cymbals shimmer at the edges of hearing. Gress' bass punctuates the sky with steady light. Monder weaves a tender cradle of sound, while Howes's violin lifts the harmony into shared prayer. The famous line "Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path" becomes more than a quotation. It describes the music itself. The verse reveals a difficult and enduring truth: that God illumines only what is necessary. Not the distant future, not the full terrain, but the next faithful step. Enough to walk. Enough to trust.

Mayo's presence introduces another aspect of David's voice, one marked by assurance rather than quiet submission. In "Psalm 110," her delivery carries confidence and resolve, giving space for Alessi's trumpet to blaze through modal strength. "Psalm 58," darker and more inward, confronts poisonous adversaries with controlled intensity, faith sharpened rather than shaken by opposition. These moments remind us that devotion in the Psalms is not passive. It wrestles. It insists. It endures.

"Psalm 128" glows with warmth and gratitude. Its music feels consecrated, as though shaped by the memory of sacrifice and release. The theme of liberation resonates here, not only as a historical movement but as a spiritual awakening. The band moves as one organism, paying reverence to the sheer act of being alive under divine order.

The album closes with "Psalm 147," a song of restoration and praise. Cruz's voice becomes liquid and radiant, bearing witness to promises remembered, fulfilled, and sealed beyond time. Jerusalem is restored not only as a place, but as an idea of wholeness, a symbol of what faith seeks when it seeks anything at all.

Better Than Gold and Silver stands among Eckemoff's finest achievements, remarkable not only for its compositional strength and musicianship, but for its atmosphere of reverence. Such depth is rare within jazz, a tradition often driven toward assertion. Eckemoff has carved a quieter path, one that leads toward the same ocean that unites all creative practice, yet refuses to rush its arrival.

There is a quiet irony in how naturally this music inhabits the space between worlds. Sacred and secular, composed and spontaneous, ancient and immediate, all coexist without conflict. The album belongs to a lineage that values depth over display, allowing proclamation to arise from spirit rather than volume. This intention is made explicit in the second disc, which presents instrumental versions of the same pieces. With the voices removed, Alessi and Howes assume melodic leadership, inviting the listener into personal meditation. Life itself becomes the text.

This is not an album that demands belief. It asks for attention, patience, and willingness. It works slowly, the way wisdom does, shaping the listener through presence. By the end, the title no longer feels metaphorical. Gold and silver fade in significance. What remains is faith refined by listening, devotion stripped of ornament, and praise offered as surrender.

A hymnal jazz, radiant with the wonders of creation, and anchored in the enduring truth that faith is not something we master, but something that holds us.

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