Yelena Eckemoff

Yelena Eckemoff, a pianist, composer, poet, and visual artist originally from Russia, fuses classical structures with spontaneous jazz invention across her singular, emotionally resonant pieces that maintain equilibrium between fully notated architecture and free exploration. Her output falls into two distinct phases: prior to 2009 she produced contemporary oratorios including The Death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ from 2000 and Travel from 2005, distributing attention among jazz, classical, new age, and sacred idioms; from Flying Steps onward in 2010 jazz assumed primacy. She regularly convenes an extraordinary array of collaborators, among them Marilyn Mazur and Mats Eilertsen for Forget-Me-Not in 2011, Arild Andersen and Peter Erskine for Glass Song in 2013, and a quintet containing Chris Potter together with Gerald Cleaver on In the Shadow of a Cloud in 2017. Adventures of the Wildflower from 2021 employed an elite Finnish sextet in Helsinki, whereas I Am a Stranger in This World from 2022 furnished an instrumental treatment of biblical psalms performed by musicians based in New York.

Born in Moscow, Eckemoff started reproducing piano music by ear at age four; one year afterward formal instruction began under her mother, herself a professional pianist. At seven she entered Gnessin State Musical College, an institution for exceptionally talented youngsters, then pursued classical piano studies at Moscow State Conservatory following secondary school. Upon earning a master’s degree in piano performance and pedagogy she taught at a Moscow music school, presented solo recitals, participated in Moscow Jazz Studio workshops, performed with an experimental jazz-rock ensemble, and wrote both instrumental and vocal compositions.

Eckemoff relocated to the United States with her husband in 1991. While adjusting to her new homeland and raising a family she suspended professional music-making yet continued private work whenever feasible, establishing a private piano academy and directing a church choir. She explored synthesizer and MIDI sequencing inside a modest home studio before assembling a working band from area players, ultimately issuing roughly thirteen self-released recordings across classical, vocal, folk, Christian, and original styles over eighteen years, most appearing on her own L & H imprint. Advocate of Love from 2009 announced her jazz turn within a trio format featuring Pat Lawrence on double bass and Michael Bolejack on percussion, with cellist Gayle Masarie as guest. The next April she released Cold Sun alongside American drummer Peter Erskine and Danish bassist Mads Vinding; organized around a winter motif (a conceptual thread that would continue through subsequent projects), the recording examined improvisation inside the jazz-piano-trio format across four lengthy pieces interspersed with six comparatively concise, direct jazz compositions. Selected among the year’s outstanding releases, reviews situated the album favorably beside ECM’s benchmark piano-trio catalog. Less than half a year afterward she issued Grass Catching the Wind with Morten Lund replacing Erskine on drums; certain commentators praised the record by proposing she had originated a fresh classical-world-improv category. For Eckemoff the project simply represented the newest stage in her ongoing development. In December she concluded the year’s trilogy with Flying Steps, restoring Erskine and substituting Darek Oleszkiewicz for Vinding on double bass; although her innate approach still inclined toward classical terrain, her partners accentuated the jazz dimension of both her playing and writing.

Eckemoff made no recordings in 2011 yet taped Forget-Me-Not that August in Denmark with bassist Mats Eilertsen and drummer Marilyn Mazur; issued in February 2012, the album received unanimous praise, several writers declaring she had completed her transition to jazz. Eckemoff herself disregarded such assessments, simply following the dictates of her muse. A month later she convened with recording and mastering engineer Rich Breen, bassist Arild Andersen, and Erskine at Bridge Recording Studio in Glendale, California—the first occasion the latter two had performed together despite prior individual ECM associations—yielding Glass Song, released the following February and incorporating water-glass percussion on select tracks. A Touch of Radiance from 2014, captured in New York, employed a quintet comprising saxophonist Mark Turner, vibraphonist Joe Locke, bassist George Mraz, and drummer Billy Hart. Although she entered a New York studio that same March, Lions did not appear until two years later, again pairing her with Andersen and Hart; the album presented an expansive portrait of “animals in the wild with human touches, a classical-jazz soundtrack that goes beyond the superficial, intermission grabs for attention and seeks out the feelings beneath the eerily accurate movements.” She closed that year with Everblue, a quartet date uniting her with Norwegian musicians Andersen, saxophonist Tore Brunborg, and drummer Jon Christensen; German state radio designated the recording jazz album of the week, underscoring her fully realized artistic perspective. Leaving Everything Behind surfaced in 2016, an emotionally intense statement unified by themes of departure and bereavement; in addition to composing the music Eckemoff supplied a poem for each piece and created the cover artwork. Joined by violinist Mark Feldman, bassist Ben Street, and Hart, the album juxtaposed new material with compositions originating in the 1980s during her earliest jazz explorations.

A further change in instrumentation and direction shaped the sessions for Blooming Tall Phlox in 2017, recorded in Finland during September 2013 with trumpeter and flügelhornist Verneri Pohjola, vibraphonist Panu Savolainen, bassist Antti Lötjönen, and drummer-percussionist Olavi Louhivuori; the project investigated memory through olfactory sensation across three suites. She finished the year in December with In the Shadow of a Cloud, featuring saxophonist-flutist-clarinetist Chris Potter, electric guitarist Adam Rogers, bassist Drew Gress, and drummer Gerald Cleaver; poems again accompanied the tracks, while the booklet reproduced her paintings, session photographs, and family-album images, and the music included some of her most tradition-oriented playing. Eckemoff reunited with Erskine and Andersen for Desert in 2018, adding reed and woodwind specialist Paul McCandless of the band Oregon; the compositions and improvisations fostered dialogue between American and European musicians, dissolving assumed stylistic distinctions, and integrated poetry, sophisticated compositional methods, and interpretive depth, offering a distinctive instance of equilibrium between intellectual complexity and emotional directness. Upon release, Germany’s NDR state radio selected the album as jazz album of the week. Later that year she issued Better Than Gold and Silver with a sextet including Ralph Alessi, Ben Monder, Christian Howes, Drew Gress, and Joey Baron. In 2019 Eckemoff released three singles—“Cicada,” “Fox,” and “Bat”—as previews for the following year’s double-length conceptual statement Nocturnal Animals, containing fourteen musical depictions of nocturnal creatures accompanied by printed poems; she collaborated with bassist Andersen and drummers-percussionists Jon Christensen and Thomas Strønen, the former’s final recording.

Adventures of the Wildflower from 2021, also double-length, was taped in Helsinki with an all-star Finnish sextet that reunited several participants from Blooming Tall Phlox. The subsequent year’s similarly expansive I Am a Stranger in This World served as companion to Better Than Gold and Silver, again uniting Eckemoff with trumpeter Ralph Alessi and bassist Drew Gress plus guitarist Adam Rogers and drummer Nasheet Waits; violinist Christian Howes, guitarist Ben Monder, and drummer Joey Baron substituted for Rogers and Waits on three tracks carried over from the earlier album.