Lonely Man and His Fish, by Yelena Eckemoff

Lonely Man and His Fish

by Yelena Eckemoff

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Steven Miller This is a truly beautiful record. The players are completely empathetic and the whole piece resonates. Imagine an elegy which is not really about sadness. There is compassion here.

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Full Digital Discography

12

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Get all 12 Yelena Eckemoff releases available on Bandcamp and save 15%.

Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality downloads of Lonely Man and His Fish, Colors (live at KITO Bremen), I Am a Stranger in This World, Nocturnal Animals, Colors, Better Than Gold And Silver, Desert, In the Shadow of a Cloud, and 4 more. , and , .

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1.	Lonely Man 06:15	buy track
2.	Pet Store 07:09	buy track
3.	First Evening at Home 06:32	buy track
4.	Breakfast for Two 03:43	buy track
5.	Man and His Fish 05:58	buy track
6.	Accident 04:51	buy track
7.	In Hospital 07:11	buy track
8.	Into the Wild 07:06	buy track
9.	Life in the Pond 05:05	buy track
10.	Survivor 06:54	buy track
11.	Empty House 06:03	buy track
12.	Song for Spark 08:59	buy track
13.	Call of Friendship 05:07	buy track
14.	Dreaming Together 06:12	buy track

about

Pianist-composer Yelena Eckemoff’s body of elaborate, ambitious jazz concept albums reaches a new virtuosic summit with "Lonely Man and His Fish," to be released April 28. A double-album set, the album is also a long-form parable, a story of deep affection between a human and his beloved pet. An all-star lineup—cornetist Kirk Knuffke, flutist Masaru Koga, bassist Ben Street, and drummer Eric Harland—helps Eckemoff breathe life into the tale.

Eckemoff, who is an artist and poet as well as a pianist and composer, typically creates imagery and text to augment her programmatic music. In the case of" Lonely Man and His Fish," she outlines the concept as a prose narrative, broken down into short chapter-like sections that correspond to each track on the album, along with paintings that illustrate key moments.

Yet, as with all of her multidisciplinary projects, it’s the music that is front and center. “Every album I do is conceptual,” she explains. “At first I get an idea about a project, whether it’s stages of life, colors, smells, or animals. Once I get an idea, I don’t write out the story before the music. I have the story worked out in my head. When I compose, I already know how the story is going to come out.”

In a sense, the actual execution of the music brings in an aspect yet another creative discipline: theater. Knuffke and his cornet perform the role of Tim, the “lonely man” of the album title (who is a retired orchestral trumpet player). Koga wields a shakuhachi—a Japanese bamboo flute—to channel the character of Spark, Tim’s fish and companion. Each has impressive solo features, like Knuffke’s on “The Lonely Man” and Koga’s on “Life in the Pond.” But the two musicians also exchange and interact beautifully on tunes like the funky “A Man and His Fish” (on which Yelena plays celeste, the first time she’s recorded on anything but piano in a studio setting) and the warm, fond closer “Dreaming Together.”

credits

released April 28, 2023

Yelena Eckemoff on piano, Fender Rhodes, and Celeste; Kirk Knuffke on cornet, Masaru Koga on Japanese flutes, Ben Street on double and el. bass, Eric Harland on drums and percussion. Written and produced by Yelena Eckemoff. Recorded on Nov. 16 - 17, 2021 at Bunker Studios, Brooklyn, NY. Recording and mixing engineer - John Davis. Mastered by Alex DeTurk.

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Yelena Eckemoff New York, New York

Yelena Eckemoff s an internationally renowned Russian/American pianist, composer, poet, and visual artist who organically blends classical elements with jazz improvisation in evocative and uniquely distinctive works that strike a delicate balance between through-composed frameworks and open-ended exploration and improvisation. ... more

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