Yelena Eckemoff, the prolific and enthralling pianist and composer, has earned plaudits for her recent releases Everblue, Lions, A Touch of Radiance, Glass Song
and more. She has made high-level original music with sidemen on the
order of Peter Erskine, Arild Andersen, Jon Christensen, George Mraz,
and Mark Turner. With her new release Leaving Everything Behind,
she deepens her multifaceted body of work by drawing on older original
material - a few pieces dating as far back as the 1980s. "To emphasize
my concept behind this album, I needed to go back to my roots," says the
pianist. "I wanted to draw on music I composed when I knew very little -
if anything at all - about the modern jazz field."
These
compositions, in various ways, recall for Eckemoff deeply personal
events and contemplations. Yet in reinventing her own works so
thoroughly and imaginatively, Eckemoff looks back to look forward,
approaching her older material from the heights of her acquired skills
as a jazz pianist and band leader. Inhabiting "that rarefied area
between modern classical chamber music and progressive jazz" (All About Jazz), Eckemoff once again enlists legendary drummer Billy Hart,
whose expressive capacities and timbral choices give the music an
unstinting freshness. Completing the lineup is sought-after bassist Ben Street and seasoned violinist and improviser Mark Feldman.
Eckemoff's album title, Leaving Everything Behind,
was inspired by her departure from the crumbling Soviet Union in 1991.
Having trained extensively as a classical pianist at the Moscow State
Conservatory, Eckemoff showed a strong desire to cross musical
boundaries and create her own unique oeuvre. "When my husband and I came
to America it was a really difficult time," she recalls. "We came to
America with less than twenty dollars in our pocket, didn't know the
language, we were struggling to get established. Listening to music was
not a priority, but I did a lot of composing and performing as a solo
pianist."
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The hardest thing by far, however, was leaving behind three small boys.
"It was really impossible for us to leave Russia," says the pianist, "so
we had to leave our children with my parents for a year and two months
just come to America together. It was the most difficult thing we ever
did. We didn't know if we'd have to go back or if they would be brought
to us. It was indefinite - we didn't know how long we weren't going to
see them."
Eckemoff confronts these memories and others in a series of poems that accompany each of the tracks on Leaving Everything Behind (a practice she began on Glass Song
from 2012). The cover art and all interior drawings are also Eckemoff's
- in fact the front cover artwork dates back to the time when she
composed the music. "I am a professional musician, and painting and
poetry for me has always been just a hobby. But I believe that including
my own poetry and paintings into the album package gives people an
opportunity to connect with my music on a deeper, more personal level.
Also, I think it's important in the age of streaming to offer people a
comprehensive physical object, a fuller experience of art."
There
is a strong through-composed element in Eckemoff's music, yet her
melding of complex written material with a flowing, elastic sense of
rhythm is what gives her efforts, Leaving Everything Behind
included, an improvisational and even playful feeling. Of the eleven
pieces, "Mushroom Rain," "Leaving Everything Behind" and "Hope Lives
Eternal" were composed when Eckemoff was in her early 20s. "Ocean of
Pines," an intricate piece with waltz, 4/4 and rubato sections and a
haunting, elusive harmonic character, was composed in 2005, while six
remaining pieces stem from a fruitful period in 2008.
There
is a magnificent texture of the quartet and the transparent beauty of
these four unique instrumental voices is immediately apparent on
"Prologue," which leads to the darker, more rhythmically emphatic
"Rising From Within." Other highlights include the contrapuntal dancing
of Eckemoff and Feldman on "Spots of Light," the Billy Hart-driven
groove of "Love Train" (not to be confused with the O'Jays hit), the
lilting quasi-shuffle feel and poignant lyricism of "Tears of
Tenderness" and the stately 3/4 pulse and soaring Feldman solo that
enlivens "A Date in Paradise."
Eckemoff,
who also produces all her albums, elaborates on her methods:
"Traditionally, jazz is about extensive improvising on what might even
be a simple tune. What I'm doing is taking more charge of the outcome. I
provide a comprehensive, carefully thought-through musical framework,
based on the important melodic material, and share with performers my
sentiments about what each piece is meant to express. At the same time I
leave much space in this framework for the creative reading by each
band member, as well as the band as a whole. When we start playing
together, each band member brings a personal interpretation of the music
material, and sometimes the outcome evolves away from what was
initially intended. The improvisational parts, both structured and free,
add a strong element of unpredictability, and also the interplay
between band members often takes the music in a new direction."
Yelena says about great Billy Hart, "He really understands where
I'm coming from, and he was a first one to describe my approach to
composition as 'pioneering the ground of making jazz an American
classical music.' Also, Billy likes the
task of expressing things through his drumming. He always wants me to
tell him what I want to express: he loves this challenge, and when he
plays, he always gives himself to the music completely." The
story behind "Coffee and Thunderstorm" makes Eckemoff laugh: "At first I
named it 'Fresh Air and Coffee,' and that's how I sent it to Billy. But
then I renamed it because it was much more turbulent and my title
didn't fit. Billy didn't know, so when we were playing it I said to him,
'Can you play something more like a thunderstorm?' He said, 'Oh, but I
was trying to express fresh air!' 'Well, I changed my mind!' And then he
was all thunderstorm.'"
While Leaving Everything Behind tells a story
that is inescapably Eckemoff's own, her poem accompanying the title
track, which mentions the Israelites leaving Egypt, hints at what
appears to be a deeper message. "They could not take with them all their
possessions. They should have taken a lot, though, to start from
scratch in a new land. Yet I cannot stop thinking about all that they
left behind... And I wonder if they had not left at all, that their
essence, after thousands of years, still lingers there, in Egypt."
