Yelena Eckemoff

Yelena Eckemoff – Lonely Man and His Fish (2023) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Studio Masters By admin · June 7, 2023 · Comments off

Pianist-composer Yelena Eckemoff’s body of elaborate, ambitious jazz concept albums reaches a new virtuosic summit with “Lonely Man and His Fish,” to be released April 28. A double-album set, the album is also a long-form parable, a story of deep affection between a human and his beloved pet. An all-star lineup—cornetist Kirk Knuffke, flutist Masaru Koga, bassist Ben Street, and drummer Eric Harland—helps Eckemoff breathe life into the tale.

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Yelena Eckemoff – Colors Live at Kito Bremen (2022) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Studio Masters By admin · January 2, 2023 · Comments off

Composer and pianist Yelena Eckemoff’s Colors (L&H Production, 2019) was a duet with drummer Manu Katche, a unique instrumentation in her ever-growing list of works. His contributions were so singular that when she had an opportunity to celebrate the album release by playing the music live at KITO in Bremen, Germany in 2019, and he could not make the gig, she opted to play solo rather than hire another drummer. It was the first time in about 15 years that she took the stage as a piano soloist, because she stopped performing as a classical concert pianist after starting her jazz journey.

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Yelena Eckemoff Quintet – A Touch of Radiance (2014) [Official Digital Download 24bit/44,1kHz]

Studio Masters By admin · July 19, 2022 · Comments off

Pianist/composer Yelena Eckemoff defines radiance as “a state of happiness or confidence when everything around you is shining”. On her 2014’s album, “A Touch of Radiance”, she explores that idea from 10 different perspectives, drawing rich inspiration from memories, emotions, and dreams, and the inner world where all three intersect. Her quintet here’s Mark Turner, Joe Locke, George Mraz & Billy Hart. These four gifted artists respond gorgeously to Eckemoff’s music, wringing bold colors and deep feeling from pieces that are both airy and intricate.

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Yelena Eckemoff & Manu Katche – Colors (2019) [Official Digital Download 24bit/88,2kHz]

Studio Masters By admin · July 19, 2022 · Comments off

Pianist-composer Yelena Eckemoffcasts her eye on the visible spectrum with Colors, her third album in just over a year, set for a February 22 release on her own L&H Production label. Accompanied only by the brilliant French drummer Manu Katché, Eckemoff creates musical impressions of 14 distinct hues, organizing them into a symbolic progression through the stages of life – using a panoply of styles as diverse as the spectrum itself.

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Yelena Eckemoff feat. Arild Andersen, Jon Christensen & Thomas Stronen – Nocturnal Animals (2019) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Studio Masters By admin · July 19, 2022 · Comments off

Pianist-composer Yelena Eckemoff adds another link to her chain of thoughtful concept albums with Nocturnal Animals, which her own L&H Production imprint will release on January 24. True to its title, the double album features 14 musical impressions of the creatures that rule the night. The pieces are brought to life by a quartet that places Eckemoff alongside bassist Arild Andersen and drummers Jon Christensen and Thomas Strønen.

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Yelena Eckemoff Trio – Lions (2015) [Official Digital Download 24bit/88,2kHz]

Studio Masters By admin · July 19, 2022 · Comments off

For Yelena Eckemoff, finding the nexus where training and an early successful career in the classical sphere meet with the Moscow-born, North Carolina-resident pianist/composer’s more recent predilection for jazz and improvised music has been a wholly natural pursuit. A meeting place where the whole is invariably greater than the sum of its parts, with Lions – her eighth jazz album in nine years – Eckemoff once again raises the bar on a very personal approach to bringing detailed composition and freewheeling extemporization together with the idea of music as real narrative.

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Yelena Eckemoff – Leaving Everything Behind (2016) [Official Digital Download 24bit/88,2kHz]

Studio Masters By admin · July 19, 2022 · Comments off

Russian-born, North Carolina-based composer Yelena Eckemoff consistently releases material that is deeply thought provoking and reflective. This time out, she leads a team with all stars Billy Hart, Ben Street and for added exoticism, violinist Mark Feldman through a collection of originals. Delicately delivered strong material. The songs are impressionistic and filled with water colors of sound.

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Yelena Eckemoff – In the Shadow of a Cloud (2017) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Studio Masters By admin · July 19, 2022 · Comments off

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 at when it comes to Eckemoff, who relocated to the USA a little over a quarter century ago. Consider her accomplishments over the past seven years: she has released the entire body of jazz work on her own L&H Productions imprint, with only the help of publicists to help get the word out; has produced all of her recordings; and, since 2014’s A Touch of Radiance, also contributed original paintings, as well as corresponding poetry to each composition.

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Yelena Eckemoff – Everblue (2015) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Studio Masters By admin · July 19, 2022 · Comments off

Recorded on September 25-26, 2014 at Rainbow Studio, Oslo, Norway. Mixed and mastered at Dogmatic Sound, Burbank CA, by Rich Breen. Original music by Yelena Eckemoff with Yelena Eckemoff on piano, Tore Brunborg on tenor and soprano saxophones, Arild Andersen on double bass, and Jon Christensen on drums.

In a quick follow-up to her masterful album “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 and hired guns for other players, and their long term contributions have been instrumental in shaping the ECM aesthetic of subtlety, intricacy, and fluid motion.

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Yelena Eckemoff – Desert (2018) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Studio Masters By admin · July 19, 2022 · Comments off

It takes a discerning eye, or in this case ear, to envision the desert as more than a vast, arid wasteland. Pianist/composer Yelena Eckemoff succeeds in musically portraying many of this daunting environment’s mysteries and its boundless allure on her new recording, “Desert”, to be released May 4 on her imprint L&H Production. The quartet outing, the latest in the impressive series of concept albums at the core of the prolific Russian-born, North Carolina-based keyboard virtuoso’s catalog, reunites her with Norwegian bassist Arild Andersen and internationally acclaimed drummer Peter Erskine and features Oregon co-founder Paul McCandless on oboe, English horn, soprano saxophone, and bass clarinet.

Each of “Desert”’s 11 thematically linked compositions, given such descriptive titles as “Bedouins,” “Mirages,” “Condor,” “Oasis,” “Dust Storm,” and “Sands,” showcase Eckemoff’s distinctive style that blends classical music with jazz improvisation to create works that range from the ethereal to the mercurial to the dissonant.

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Yelena Eckemoff – Blooming Tall Phlox (2017) [Official Digital Download 24bit/44,1kHz]

Studio Masters By admin · July 19, 2022 · Comments off

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 memories, and recruited a Finnish band to realize her vision.

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Yelena Eckemoff – Better Than Gold and Silver (2018) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Studio Masters By admin · July 19, 2022 · Comments off

The only real surprise at this stage in Yelena Eckemoff’s unique, super-prolific career would be if the Russian-born pianist-composer made new music that didn’t surprise. But even by that standard, Yelena Eckemoff’s double album, Better Than Gold and Silver, on which she sets biblical psalms to music, is an amazement: Each disc of Better Than Gold and Silver consists of ten selections, presented in identical order. The first disc features Eckemoff with vocalists, the second disc consists of instrumental versions by the same ensemble, different takes with longer solos in which the vocal lines are given to the various instruments. The gorgeous clarion tone of Alessi’s trumpet spreads joy through a “songs without words” approach. Floating on Eckemoff’s glistening lyricism at the piano, which draws from her classical training as well as jazz, blues, gospel, and pop, the music is remarkably open and lit from within, seemingly inspired by Psalm 119: Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path. Though Eckemoff has long played religious music in church, she says: My musical settings of the Biblical Psalms do not belong to the oeuvre of Christian music. It is rather a work of modern jazz.

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Yelena Eckemoff – Adventures of the Wildflower (2021) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Studio Masters By admin · July 19, 2022 · Comments off

“Pianist-composer Yelena Eckemoff unfurls her most elaborate and ambitious musical work yet with Adventures of the Wildflower. As its title suggests, the album is the story of a life, from birth to death (and rebirth), of an anthropomorphic columbine flower. Long a conceptualist, Yelena Eckemoff has previously tended to craft albums of thematically linked but discrete pieces. Adventures of the Wildflower, however, functions as a single narrative. The floweraptly named Columbineundertakes a vivid journey, growing from baby to mature plant as she observes from her garden spot the whirl of nature and of life, plant and animal, around her. She even learns to communicate with her garden mates, a real phenomenon that inspired Yelena Eckemoff to create the album. Yelena Eckemoff supplements her original music with an 18-part narrative poem (one part for each composition) that tells Columbines story. While nuanced, the narrative is built on an earnest simplicity, like a childrens story. The music, on the other hand, is much more complex. Sometimes multiple levels of melody that create a splendid feast for both the ear and the intellect, sometimes pieces that are filled with experimental, even psychedelic textures. The credit for these soundscapes also goes to the musicians who work with Yelena Eckemoff.”

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Yelena Eckemoff – I Am a Stranger in This World (2022) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Studio Masters By admin · July 13, 2022 · Comments off

I am a melodist, but the melodies that come from the words I hear in the Psalms, I think they are the best melodies I create. And I think it’s because there’s a power in those words. . . . You can feel the power that God channels through that music. – Yelena EckemoffPianist-composer Yelena Eckemoff adds to her already impressive corpus of settings for the Psalms. The album is a new installment in a long-term musical project that began with 2018s Better Than Gold and Silver, and once again teams Eckemoff with that albums trumpeter Ralph Alessi and bassist Drew Gress, along with guitarist Adam Rogers and drummer Nasheet Waits.

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