Romance of the Moon Yelena Eckemoff

• 1Bells05:53
• 2Barren Orange Tree08:14
• 3Guitar06:08
• 4Ballad of the Sea Water06:12
• 5About Cats07:13
• 6Romance of the Moon09:08
• 7Window Nocturnes05:59
• 8Diamond05:56
• 9Adventurous Snail04:59
• 10Thirsty for New Songs06:02
• 11Memento03:36
• 12Old Lizard04:41
• 13August05:05
• Total Runtime01:19:06

Info for Romance of the Moon

Yelena Eckemoff's latest project, "Romance of the Moon," is both a departure for the pianist-composer and very much in keeping with her highly personal blend of programmatic compositions shaped by European classical music and jazz's expressive interplay. The album features the great Sardinian trumpeter Paolo Fresu as the lead voice interpreting Eckemoff's deeply evocative instrumental settings for 13 poems by Federico Garcia Lorca, whose work she first encountered as a budding pianist-composer in her native Moscow.

Pianist-composer-conceptualist tries something a little bit different—but no less cerebral and audacious—with "Romance of the Moon," set for a May 10 release on her own L&H Production label. Always a multimedia thinker, Eckemoff has previously made albums that incorporate her visual art as well as stories, poems, and concepts from her own imagination. This time, she presents a suite of compositions inspired by the great Spanish poet Federico García Lorca, as interpreted by the formidable Italian ensemble that includes bassist Luca Bulgarelli, drummer Stefano Bagnoli, guitarist Riccardo Bertuzzi, and world-renowned trumpet icon Paolo Fresu.

If this seems a departure from projects like Eckemoff's 2023 effort "Lonely Man and His Fish," based on her narrative of a human-pet relationship, or 2021's "Adventures of the Wildflower," tracing the life of a single plant, that's because it is. "Romance of the Moon" has more in common with Eckemoff's diptych of albums based on the biblical Psalms, 2018's "Better Than Gold and Silver" and 2022's "I Am a Stranger in This World." Those, however, were written as vocal settings (albeit performed without vocalists). These new compositions were conceived, written, and executed as instrumental music.

I translated the Lorca texts into Italian so the musicians would know exactly what every composition is about. That's how important it was that they know exactly what the poem says. These are instrumentals, but the music still corresponds to the poems.

That's not to say, however, that Eckemoff's pieces are any less tightly intertwined with the Lorca poems that inspired them. In fact, the composer went so far as to translate the texts into Italian so that her sidemen "would know exactly what every composition is about," she says. "That's how important it was that they know exactly what the poem says. These are instrumentals, but the music still corresponds to the poems." She translated them again, into English, for the listener's reference.

Based though it is in poetry, "Romance of the Moon" nonetheless has a dramatic sweep. This occurs on the level of the individual tracks—as with Fresu's taut, suspenseful trumpet line on "Barren Orange Tree" and Bertuzzi's carefully developing guitar solo on "Old Lizard"—and across the full album, building from the reflective opener "Bells" to the moody crest of the title track, then to the evocative, satisfying resolution of "August." Like Lorca and other great poets, Eckemoff thoroughly understands the importance of form, both macro and micro.

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, eventually matriculating at Moscow State Conservatory to study classical piano.

In her early twenties, Eckemoff found herself drawn to jazz—at a time when the music, or at least recordings of it, were a rare commodity in the then-Soviet Union. Soon, however, came Dave Brubeck's groundbreaking 1987 concert in Moscow, which for Eckemoff was definitive. Jazz, she then knew, was where her destiny lay.

Of course, any thorough immersion in jazz had to be done in the United States, where Eckemoff immigrated in 1991 and settled in North Carolina. Not only did the move entrench her in the land that gave birth to jazz, but it gave her easier access to players who could do justice to her intricate ideas.

Finding those players was no easy task. Finally, though, a MySpace encounter with Danish bassist Mads Vinding—combined with a bold through-the-mail contact with drummer Peter Erskine—yielded her 2010 breakthrough, the album Cold Sun. Her subsequent collaborators have included Marilyn Mazur ("Forget-Me-Not"); Arild Andersen and Billy Hart (Lions); Mark Turner, Joe Locke, and George Mraz ("A Touch of Radiance"); Mark Feldman ("Leave Everything Behind"); Chris Potter and Gerald Cleaver ("In the Shadow of a Cloud"); Ralph Alessi ("Better Than Gold and Silver," "I Am a Stranger in This World"); and, on 2023's "Lonely Man and His Fish," Kirk Knuffke, Masaru Koga, Ben Street, and Eric Harland.

"Romance of the Moon" is Eckemoff's first encounter with Fresu, Bulgarelli, Bertuzzi, and Bagnoli. "In jazz, the project is only finished when recorded with jazz musicians," she explains. "I design each project for them to be able to express themselves." Disciplined and free, these musicians inhabit Eckemoff's beguiling themes with the distilled intensity of Lorca's poems.

Yelena Eckemoff, piano, keyboards
Paolo Fresu, trumpet, flügelhorn
Riccardo Bertuzzi, guitar
Luca Bulgarelly, double bass
Stefano Bagnoli, drums

Yelena Eckemoff
was born in Moscow, Russia, in the Soviet Union. Her parents noticed that she had musical talent when she started to play piano by ear at the age of four. Yelena’s mother, Olga, a professional pianist, became her first piano teacher. At the age of seven Yelena was accepted into an elite Gnessins School for musically gifted children where, in addition to common school subjects, she received extensive training in piano, music theory, music literature, solfeggio, harmony, analysis of musical forms, conducting, composing, and other musical subjects. She was fortunate to study piano with Anna Pavlovna Kantor, who also trained one of today’s most celebrated pianists, Evgeny Kissin. Later Yelena studied piano with Galina Nikolaevna Egiazarova at the Moscow State Conservatory. Upon graduation with Master’s Degree in piano performance and pedagogy, she worked as a piano teacher in one of Moscow music schools, gave solo concerts, attended courses at the Moscow Jazz Studio, played in an experimental jazz-rock band, and composed a lot of instrumental and vocal music.

In 1991, with her husband, Yelena emigrated to the United States. While assimilating and surviving in a new country and raising children, she had to put her musical career on hold. During these years Yelena experimented with synthesizer and MIDI sequencer in her little home studio, then founded an ensemble of local musicians. She self-released albums in various genres including classical, vocal, folk, Christian, and her original music.

She recorded her first jazz album, COLD SUN, in 2009, accompanied by drummer Peter Erskine and Danish bassist Mads Vinding, which proved to be the major turning point in her jazz career. Cold Sun was names one of 15 best jazz CD releases of 2010 by Warren Allen (AAJ) and drew comparisons to the stark music of ECM Records.

From that point on, Eckemoff churned out compelling and focused jazz albums at an astounding pace; she recorded and released four more piano trio records in less than four years engaging such notable jazz musicians as Mads Vinding, Morten Lund, Mats Eilertsen, Marilyn Mazur, Darek Olezskiewicz, Peter Erskine, and Arild Andersen. FORGET-ME-NOT (L & H, 2012) was in the best 10 on CMJ charts for over 10 weeks. “Themes of nature, sounds of isolation, stark settings, and blurred lines between compositional and improvisational elements are visible on all of Eckemoff’s trio dates, but no two records sound exactly the same.” (John Kelman)

For GLASS SONG (L&H, 2013), she reenlisted Erskine and brought bassist Arild Andersen into the fold for the first time. Surprisingly, neither veteran had ever recorded together, but you would never know it. “Eckemoff, Andersen and Erskine create music that’s focused, yet free floating, and open, yet never nebulous. Pure melody is of less importance than the greater narrative in each number, but the music still sings out with melodic grace. While Manfred Eicher and his storied label have nothing to do with this record, Glass Song has that “ECM sound,” if ever it existed. Mystery, blooming musical thoughts and vaguely haunting notions are at the heart of this captivating album.” (Dan Bilawsky)

Yelena Eckemoff ‘s Lions (L&H 2015), with bassist Arild Andersen and drummer Billy Hart is a long but comprehensive look at 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.

“EVERBLUE (L&H, 2015) has Arild Andersen, saxophonist Tore Brunborg and drummer Jon Christensen. This Norwegian all-star contingent fits beautifully into Eckemoff’s aesthetic: Andersen with his looming pronouncements like final summations; Christensen with his suggestive rhythmic ambiguity; Brunborg with his clear, clean sound and respect for space. Glass Song, Lions and Everblue contain some of the most powerful, poetic work of Andersen’s long career.” (Thomas Conrad)

“LEAVING EVERYTHING BEHIND (L&H, 2016) is united around themes of departure and loss. Yelena wrote a poem for each piece and made the cover art. She is accompanied by violinist Mark Feldman, whose background is in classical and country music. Several of compositions date from the 1980s; a time when she was just beginning her exploration into jazz. These pieces seem highly refined, replete with airy, vague harmonies that refer equally to Bill Evans and Claude Debussy.” (Mark Sullivan)

BLOOMING TALL PHLOX (L&H, 2017) is intended to evoke different scents that Yelena Eckemoff recalls from her childhood in Russia. These powerful smells trigger a myriad of magical memories, each of which somehow, is transformed into a moveable feast of sounds – melodies set free by Yelena Eckemoff on a gloriously tuned piano and harmonized by Verneri Pohjola, a Finnish horn player, together with Panu Savolainen on vibraphone, Antti Lötjönen on bass and the percussionist colorist Olavi Louhivuori.

Although jazz is associated with improvisation, Eckemoff often writes her tunes out. Her music has been described as classical chamber music in the context of improvisational jazz. She developed a highly acclaimed jazz style that incorporates her classical technique and influences very effectively. With each new record Eckemoff’s distinctive, recognizable approach to melody becomes even more prominent. Yelena Eckemoff uses life and nature’s bouquets as her muse to create the body of work that blends post-modern abstraction, classical thought, and jazz language into a seamless whole. True to her classical-jazz impressionism, Eckemoff sees humanity in nature.

A band leader, producer and co-founder of L & H Production record label, Yelena also gives piano lessons. She had served as a church musician and choir director for over 22 years, until she got too busy with her recording and performing schedule. Yelena believes in hard work, God’s guidance, humanism, and eternal love.

This album contains no booklet.