Yelena Eckemoff - Rosendals Garden VI

" Öresund Bridge" (L & H Productions, 2025)

“In October 2024, keyboardist/composer Yelena Eckemoff began rolling out singles in anticipation of her new recording, Rosendals Garden, with the title piece. A park of the same name, which is on Djurgården, an island in Stockholm that belongs to the Swedish royal family, as well as Eckemoff’s rhythm section, bassist Svante Henryson and drummer Morgan Ågren, inspired the eleven tracks suite of songs making up Rosendals Garden album. She followed that release with “Strandvägen Pier,” “Ruins of Älvsborg,” “ABBA Museum,” “Gamla Stan”, and now - “Öresund Bridge.”

This is not a traditional jazz piano trio as Svante Henryson plays both bass and cello ... one supercharged with shamefully abundant talent, vision and a twenty-first century zeitgeist. Eckemoff has a solid sight on the horizon, composing music with this rhythm section in mind.

Her sixth single is decidedly autumnal and edgy, maybe even spooky. The song is angular, with sharp, marching edges. The head figure is complex and ancient. Eckemoff’s organ and Henryson’s cello lend a decadent minor-key flavor to the piece, decadent in the sense of supernatural romanticism. The composer plays an extended piano solo, leading back into her baroque broken counterpoint idée fixe. Fragrant with Fall, “Öresund Bridge” could be an early ‘60s Halloween theme. Smart and swinging in an advanced mathematical manner, “Öresund Bridge” begs that more of this music.