Yelena Eckemoff Trio feat. Arild Andersen & Peter Erskine - Glass Song (2013) FLAC

Tracklist:

[7:30] 01. Yelena Eckemoff Trio - Melting Ice
[9:32] 02. Yelena Eckemoff Trio - Glass Song
[5:47] 03. Yelena Eckemoff Trio - Cloud Break
[7:07] 04. Yelena Eckemoff Trio - Polarity
[7:41] 05. Yelena Eckemoff Trio - Dripping Icicles
[5:34] 06. Yelena Eckemoff Trio - Sweet Dreams
[6:32] 07. Yelena Eckemoff Trio - Whistle Song
[7:22] 08. Yelena Eckemoff Trio - Sunny Day in the Woods
[7:43] 09. Yelena Eckemoff Trio - Elegy
[7:56] 10. Yelena Eckemoff Trio - March Rain





Pianist Yelena Eckemoff is refreshing. She has carved a niche for herself with an eye constantly trained to still newer paths. "Once I finish a project, I'm already thinking of the next one," she says, during a phone interview. But let us linger on Glass Song, before being swept away again. The album offers a set of 10 originals that finds the Russian-born pianist/composer in the company of none other than bassist Arild Andersen and drummer Peter Erskine. Astonishingly, this session marks the first time the two sidemen have played together, despite their extensive ECM tenures.

Yet if their potential collaboration has been separated all these years by mere water, it is made a reality by the same in "Melting Ice." In solace but never solitude, they forge a balance that is intuitive and years in the making: one spinning a hub of recollection, the other spoking it with sunlit avenues of possibility. It is a rural introduction, a moving picture of ice-coated branches and a burning dawn that makes of them dripping icicles of thought. As if to embrace such evocative response, Eckemoff includes, in lieu of liner notes, poetic reflections on each track of this winter in transition:

...hidden forces of spring are awakening...

and the stiff ground comes alive with tiny multiple streams.

As is clear from her diarist's approach, writing and music are intimately connected. And how does this shape her creative spirit? "I always have something in mind behind my music. My subjects this time are poetic, and so the liner notes reflect that. I thought they might open up other channels. All arts are interconnected."

Therein lies her knack for atmospheres. One needn't look at a single song name to step into its picture. The title track, for one, features Eckemoff playing water-filled glasses, which Erskine complements with his sparse touches. The deep, crystalline changes and wandering qualities find backbone in Andersen's subdued yet melodically rich playing. This track grew out of Eckemoff's improvisations with the glasses. "I was under the spell of the sound, of its purity," she recalls. "There was something magical about it. It was the first brick in the project I thought Arild would love, and he did. It was the beginning of everything." From this we can sense just how openly Eckemoff respects her band mates, how much freer she becomes as she glues more feathers to her improvisatory wings. Between the rubato internal dialogues of "Polarity," which boasts a notable monologue from Andersen, and the moderately syncopated "Dripping Icicles," there is plenty of blush to the snow. There is the sense of a spirit of nature aroused from slumber, such that "Whistle Song" moves like an animal through that snow, a squirrel leaving a trail of hopped tracks and a playful spirit threading them to the tree where they stop.