Yelena Eckemoff - Scenes From The Dark Ages

(L & H Productions, 2025)

Painting: Yelena Eckemoff

Black ash from the foundry / Hangs like a hood
But the air is perfumed / By the burning firewood
The seeds are bursting / The spring is a-seeping
Lay down my darling / Love ain't for keeping

—Peter Townsend, “Love Ain’t For Keeping” from Who’s Next (Decca, 1971)

Art of any flavor expects much from its consumer. But, what of the consumers’ expectations of art? The consumers of art should have demands of that art. One demand should be that art leads the consumer to other art, familiar and new, whether of the same or different flavor.

Yelena Eckemoff’s Scenes From The Dark Ages meets this demand, extending it well beyond the original mandate. When listening, one might think of Wishbone Ash’s brilliantly thematic Argus (Decca, 1972) or, stepping out a little farther, Procol Harum’s A Salty Dog (A&M, 1969), both having a unifying theme, an emotive leitmotif or idée fixe that centers the theme’s integration. Both recordings are expansive and panoramic. Eckemoff organized Scenes similarly. Eckemoff’s medieval suite sounds like a most hip twenty-first century soundtrack that crosses Howard Shore’s faintly Celtic character studies in the Lord Of The Rings franchise with Michael Pretorius’ sixteenth century dance dictionary, Terpsichore.

What Eckemoff achieves beyond these comparisons above is a level of musical density from which no ear can turn. Scenes comprise 15 carefully realized tone pieces ranging from the ultra-pastoral “Pilgrims” and “From Peasant’s Life” to the Crusades militancy of “Battle” and “Tournament.” Guitarist Riccardo Bertuzzi brings the fire, while flautist Carlo Nicita provides the spark into the flame maintained by violinist Eloisa Manera. The undulating tones of bassist Riccardo Oliva and the varied polyrhythms of percussionist/drummer Trilok Gurtu tethered loosely these earth energies into a bright and variously shaded tapestry of lushly modal sound.

While an ensemble effort, all would be for naught, were the genius of Yelena Eckemoff not present. She weaves, medieval modal harmonies with progressive rock and jazz-rock fusion, while maintaining that “old” sound familar to all. Wildly imaginative and deeply romantic, the composer has drawn from the staff an entire world of rhythm and sound impregnated with “the air … perfumed by the burning firewood.” Scenes From The Dark Ages is the most fully realized of Eckemoff’s work. Wow! What is next?