Denis Krupin(Russia)-Light
Composer: Denis Krupin
Album: Path To Light(2021)
Denis Krupin – guitars,keyboards,vst instruments,computer programming
Andrea Marcelli – percussion (2,4,6,7,8,9,10) Bob Mintzer – sax (6,9)
Jerry Goodman – electric violin (3,8) Dedicated To Lyle Mays
The sadness after Lyle left us does not go away, but it pours out into the light. Many thanks to Andrea Marcelli, Bob Mintzer and Jerry Goodman for brightening my album with their presence!
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The internationally acclaimed bassist and composer releases his first album as leader with Basho Records, emphasising rich harmony, powerful melodic lines and a playful sense of humour.
‘In this music, I feel that jazz is alive, healthy and moving forward in the 21st Century’ – Bob James, Grammy winning pianist
Born in Moscow, bassist and composer Yuri Goloubev has made the transition between an acclaimed classical music career and successful jazz performance with unusual fluidity and authority. Goloubev has featured on over 100 recordings and is in high demand as a musician internationally. ‘Two Chevrons Apart’ features a quartet with Tim Garland, John Turville and Asaf Sirkis and is his first release as leader for Basho Records (he also featured on pianist Gwilym Simcock’s Blues Vignette album).Basho
Katerina Brown
Places Songs of Her Native Russia
Alongside Pieces from the Jazz Repertoire
On "Mirror,"
Set for October 18 Release
By Mellowtone Music
Vocalist's Debut Album
Features a Band with Bassist/Producer Gary Brown,
Pianist Adam Shulman,
Drummers Akira Tana & Timothy Angulo, &
Guests Including
Vocalist Kenny Washington, Percussionist Airto Moreira
CD Release Show at the Sound Room, Oakland,
Saturday, November 2
September 19, 2019
 Vocalist Katerina Brown explores her recently minted identity as a Russian immigrant to the United States with the October 18 release of Mirror, her remarkable debut album, on Mellowtone Music. Accompanied by a band of San Francisco Bay Area musicians that includes her husband, bassist Gary Brown(who also produced the album), pianist Adam Shulman, and drummers Akira Tana and Timothy Angulo along with a number of special guests, Brown offers interpretations of three classic Russian songs (first in her native language, then in English translations) as well as five favorites from the American repertoire.
The tunes on Mirror not only span nations, but also styles. They range from delicate ballads to lilting bossa nova to brash, bluesy swingers. "It's a jazz CD, but it has different styles," says Brown. "I want to show people that I'm still searching. Standards helped me find myself but that's not what defines me. ... I want to explore more."
The stylistic range itself is one of the album's star attractions, opening with a fragile take on the romantic Russian song "The Gate" (featuring violinist Mads Tolling), followed by a saucy treatment of the Gershwins' standard "They Can't Take That Away from Me" (a duet with singer Kenny Washington) and a tremendously swaggering "Moanin'" on which Brown sings Jon Hendricks's vocalese lyrics (with organist Brian Ho, trumpeter Miles Olmos, and saxophonist Robert Roth augmenting the core band). Elsewhere, the Brazilian guitarist Ricardo Peixoto and percussionists Celso Alberti and Airto Moreira lend subtle bossa nova flavors to "Like a Lover" and "I Feel You."
At the same time, however, the three Russian songs, strategically positioned as the opening, closing, and central pieces ("The Gate," "The Mirror," and "It's Snowing," respectively), have undeniable significance for this document of Brown's artistic arrival. "When I came here, I thought, 'To be a Russian jazz singer singing all American songs, that's a bit strange," she says. "I need to bring something from my culture so that American audiences can listen and get familiar with them."
This cultural cross-pollination includes the arrangements as well as the songs themselves. Both Shulman and St. Petersburg pianist Dina Sineglazova provided charts for Mirror, even collaborating in the case of one tune. It further evidences Brown's determination to be as unconstrained by geography as she is by style.
 Katerina Brown was born July 16, 1982 in a small town outside St. Petersburg, in what was then the Soviet Union. She was drawn to music as an infant and devoured the few jazz albums in her father's collection (especially those by Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington). She studied classical vocals as a teenager, but performed by night in local jazz and blues clubs before moving to St. Petersburg at 19 and forming her own blues band at 21.
Soon afterward, Brown joined the Old Fashioned Blues Project, which took her from the local scene to a national one, touring all around Russia and into Ukraine for the next six years. In 2010, however, she quit the band to matriculate at the Saint-Petersburg State University of Culture and Arts, where she formally studied music theory and on her own dug deeper into jazz vocals. Soon she was performing as featured vocalist for a big band sponsored by Russia's Ministry of Internal Affairs.
In 2013, Brown met her future husband Gary Brown when the American bassist was touring Russia with pianist Rebeca Mauleón. They struck up an acquaintance that ultimately led to the singer applying for a visa to study jazz in the United States. She first spent time in New York City before moving to the Bay Area in 2015 and establishing herself within its thriving jazz scene. She has worked as the featured vocalist with SFJAZZ's Monday Night Big Band and is a frequent performer at the region's top jazz venues. She also teaches the vocal technique developed by the Complete Vocal Institute in Denmark, which is based on the anatomy and physiology of the human body.
Photography: Tanya Magnani
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Yelena Eckemoff Presents
An Exploration of
The Nighttime Animal Kingdom
On "Nocturnal Animals,"
Set for January 24 Release
By Her L&H Production Label
Pianist-Composer Imagines Thoughts & Personalities of
14 Wild, Darkness-Dwelling Creatures,
In an Unusual Quartet Setting
With Bassist Arild Andersen,
Drummers Jon Christensen & Thomas Strønen
October 28, 2019
 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.
Eckemoff is fond of creating these sorts of sonic portrait galleries. Prior albums have explored such disparate subjects as the desert, the biblical psalms, and colors. Yet never before has the North Carolina (by way of Moscow) pianist taken on such an array of wild beasts. Appropriately, however, Nocturnal Animals teems with life: in the music, of course, but also in the free-verse poems that Eckemoff has written as supplements to each of the album's compositions.
"No one knows how and what animals think," she says. "But in my poetic writing about them I perceive each one as a being with an intriguing personality, and they all think and act similarly to how people would in certain situations."
That personification is manifest in the gripping suspense of "Bat," the sly but stealthy swing of "Fox," the roaming, appropriately glimmering "Firefly,"and the graceful, determined "Sea Turtle." A number of pieces take on surprising dimensions that depart from our received wisdom about these animals. "Walkingstick," for example, has a supple, delicate beauty that offsets its strange syncopations; "Toad" is stately and majestic; and "Scorpion" has tinges of warmth and empathy enfolded into its moody, mysterious structures.
In short, Nocturnal Animals conveys a tremendous amount of nuance, thanks for which go to the musicians who help Eckemoff to execute her vision. Andersen, with whom the pianist has the longest collaborative relationship, acts largely as a second or counter-melodist for her, while the dual drummers draw rhythmic designs around each of them (and each other). "Jon is so unique, so insanely original; he doesn't play patterns or beats, he plays around the beat, against the beat, building layers," Eckemoff explains. "Thomas grew up listening to Jon. If anyone could work together with him, it was Thomas.... You can hear how differently they play and at the same time marvel at their remarkable compatibility and interplay."
L. to r.: Jon Christensen, Yelena Eckemoff, Arild Andersen, Thomas Strønen.
Yelena Eckemoff was born in Moscow, where she started playing by ear and composing music when she was four. By seven, she was attending the Gnessins School for musically gifted children. But while she was thus groomed for classical musicianship, including piano studies at Moscow State Conservatory, Eckemoff wanted to rock and roll.
Her love of rock music included Mahavishnu Orchestra, which helped lead her to jazz in her twenties. That new passion was sealed when Eckemoff attended Dave Brubeck's 1987 concert in Moscow. The experience reconfigured her composing and playing, and led her to form a jazz band.
Playing jazz proved to be a difficult proposition, due both to the complexity of her compositions and to the repressive nature of the Soviet regime. On the latter issue, she devoted herself (at great personal cost) to obtaining a U.S. visa, finally doing so in 1991 and settling in North Carolina.
The former was a matter of finding high-caliber musicians to play with, which she would also eventually achieve. Cold Sun, her 2010 debut recording, featured the great Danish bassist Mads Vinding and the legendary American drummer Peter Erskine. By the time of 2018's Better Than Gold and Silver, she was able to attract an all-star lineup that included the likes of trumpeter Ralph Alessi, guitarist Ben Monder, bassist Drew Gress, and drummer Joey Baron.
Nocturnal Animals is the pianist-composer's 15th release in ten years, demonstrating her extraordinary (and seemingly never-ending) fount of inspiration. "There are so many ideas going through my head at any given time," Eckemoff says. "I don't know what I'll explore next."
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Yelena Eckemoff Presents
A Journey through the Human Life Span
On "Colors,"
Set for February 22 Release
By Her L&H Production Imprint
Pianist-Composer Renders the Stages of Life
As Various Impressionistic Hues,
In an Imaginative Duet Recording
With Drummer Manu Katché
Solo Piano Performance at Bop Stop, Cleveland, 2/27
& in Bremen, Germany, 4/25
January 18, 2019
 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.
Colors is both a popular title and subject in the jazz world, placing Eckemoff into a tradition that extends from Ellington's magnum opus "Black, Brown and Beige" to Miles Davis's late-period suite Aura. The Russian-born pianist's conception is unique, however. There is striking originality in its stylistic breadth, its intimate duet setting, and its panoramic view of the human life span -- which Eckemoff also maps with a series of free-verse poems that correspond to each color and composition.
"Ultimately, everything is filtered through my inner feelings and expressed through melody and harmony, but this isn't about me," says Eckemoff. "I deliberately avoided any autobiographical references. It's about the average course of anyone's life."
That course runs from the "White" of birth's blank slate to the "Black" of death's unknowable void. The path within this framework, however, deviates from the basic light-to-dark progression that it suggests. "White" is followed by "Pink," representing an infant's discovery and perception of the world; "Orange" is the burst of youthful energy; "Violet" is the thrill of first love. As the life matures, a more sophisticated palette comes into play: "Bordeaux" portrays a bottle of wine as a nuanced metaphor for an aging mind and body, while "Aquamarine" evokes the ocean, along with an array of associated memories and sentiments.
Eckemoff's playing style similarly zigzags from point to disparate point, according to the moods and ideas expressed in each piece. Where "Indigo" is grim jazz-rock, "Blue" evolves from an exquisite lyrical ballad into a violent emotional storm, to be followed by the sultry but playful passions of "Red" and "Brown"'s whimsical waltz of inspiration.
The range of ideas in the music is informed by Eckemoff's work with drummer Katché (above), whose remarkable individuality made him a natural fit for the project. "He's always searching for grooves, while my music is a combination of structured and improvisational approaches," she says. "This was exactly what I wanted-the groovy, spicy drums which would be a world in themselves and not merely following the piano."
Yelena Eckemoff was born in Moscow, where she started playing by ear and composing music when she was four and attended Gnessins School for musically gifted children. During her teens she became devoted to rock music, even as she studied classical piano at Moscow State Conservatory.
In her early twenties, her eclectic musical interests extended into jazz. The standard repertoire was her primary teacher, though she applied those lessons to the writing of new tunes. Eckemoff's witnessing of Dave Brubeck's 1987 concert in Moscow, however, changed her life, leading directly to the formation of her first band that "tried to play jazz."
Playing jazz proved to be a difficult proposition, due both to the complexity of her compositions and to the repressive nature of the Soviet regime. On the latter issue, she devoted herself (at great personal cost) to obtaining a U.S. visa, finally doing so in 1991 and settling in North Carolina.
The former was a matter of finding high-caliber musicians to play with, which she would also eventually achieve. Cold Sun, her 2010 debut jazz recording, featured the great Danish bassist Mads Vinding and the legendary American drummer Peter Erskine. By the time of 2018's Better Than Gold and Silver, she was able to attract an all-star lineup that included the likes of trumpeter Ralph Alessi, guitarist Ben Monder, bassist Drew Gress, and drummer Joey Baron.
Then came Colors, and the chance to work with Katché -- at which she jumped, knowing the strength of their musical connection. "I felt the closeness of our souls," she says, "and thought that it would be a pleasant and exciting challenge to make this record with him."
Video from the Colors recording session: https://youtu.be/
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The prolific Russian-born, North Carolina-based pianist/composer Yelena Eckemoffadds a sacred dimension to the ambitious series of concept albums in her extensive catalogue her new 2-CD set Better Than Gold and Silver. Due for September 21release on her imprint L&H Production, it's the first in a projected series of recordings featuring Eckemoff's settings of Biblical psalms. The new album includes both vocal and instrumental versions of 10 songs she conceived as works of modern jazz rather than part of the Christian music canon. 
The genesis of Eckemoff's interest in composing jazz settings for sacred texts dates back to her time in her native Moscow, where she and her husband were searching for something to fill the spiritual void around them. They found it in the hymns and religious songs of the city's only Baptist church and its choir and pipe organ; soon, these former atheists were drawn into Christianity and baptized.
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| "Better Than Gold and Silver" EPK |
