| Jazz |
Here is the latest creation from Yelena Eckemoff. Of course, one can find a structure that comes from classical music in this composition, which is the hallmark of all composers from Europe. However, this is indeed a high-quality jazz album where the excellent cornetist Kirk Knuffke is the central instrument, along with the equally impressive musicians Eric Harland and Masaru Koga on shakuhachi and other flutes. Lonely Man and His Fish tells a story of elegant simplicity that unfolds to the rhythm of the evocation of the life of a young man, a woman or a man.
On the piano and Rhodes, here Elena Eckemoff is more in her role as a composer than as a musician, with the cornet taking the lead. The piano is more in the role of an active decoration with some nice moments that make this album a work in its own right. A man meets a fish. The man loses the fish. The fish and the man are reunited. But in Eckemoff’s musical universe, who is also a poet and graphic artist at the origin of the stunning album cover, apparently simple stories reveal both the numinous radiance of everyday life and our spiritual ties to the natural world.
One could almost speak of jazz opera, so much does the dialogue of the cornetist set the tone of this story and take us from settings to landscapes, unless it is the other way around… But here, it is impossible to ignore the romanticism and poetry of Elena Eckemoff’s compositions, which with her style manages to renew herself with each album, which are each time real architectures where it is not enough to stop at a first listen because one must detect in her work all the subtleties of her arrangements that give us the key to her favorite composers to whom she seems to refer with her immense talent.
So, if you too love the beauty of art, music that speaks as much to your heart as to your soul, you will understand why the Paris-Move and Bayou Blue Radio editorial teams have classified this album in the category of “Indispensable”.
Thierry De Clemensat
Correspondent in USA
Bayou Blue News – Bayou Blue Radio – Paris-Move
PARIS-MOVE, April 12th 2023
::::::::::::::::::::::