Yelena Eckemoff

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.

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.

Pianist/composer Yelena Eckemoff defines radiance as a state of happiness or confidence when everything around you is shining. On her latest CD, A Touch of Radiance, she explores that idea from ten different perspectives, drawing rich inspiration from memories, emotions, and dreams, and the inner world where all three intersect.

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 top echelon of the jazz world and created a substantial discography of very good to excellent recordings, collaborating with the cream of rhythm section cohorts–-bassists Arild Andersen and Jon Christensen, drummers Peter Erskine and Billy Hart.

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.

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.

Pianist Yelena Eckemoff got a late start as a full-fledged jazz recording artist but she's making up for lost time. Eckemoff entered the artistic world as a young classical pianist in the Soviet Union, but she chose to put her work on hold for a spell while raising her children. Eventually, she returned to the piano with renewed creativity energy, but only after leaving her native land. In order to make the move, Eckemoff and her husband had to temporarily leave their three children behind, which was a difficult and gut wrenching decision, but all worked out in the end and her relocation to the United States gave her a new personal and artistic lease on life.

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.

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.