Adventures Of The Wildflower

Pianist-composer Yelena Eckemoff unfurls her most elaborate and ambitious musical work yet with Adventures of the Wildflower. As its title suggests, the album is the story of a life, from birth to death (and rebirth), of an anthropomorphic columbine flower. Long a conceptualist, Yelena Eckemoff has previously tended to craft albums of thematically linked but discrete pieces. Adventures of the Wildflower, however, functions as a single narrative. The flower—aptly named Columbine—undertakes a vivid journey, growing from baby to mature plant as she observes from her garden spot the whirl of nature and of life, plant and animal, around her. She even learns to communicate with her garden mates, a real phenomenon that inspired Yelena Eckemoff to create the album. Yelena Eckemoff supplements her original music with an 18-part narrative poem (one part for each composition) that tells Columbine’s story. While nuanced, the narrative is built on an earnest simplicity, like a children’s story. The music, on the other hand, is much more complex. Sometimes multiple levels of melody that create a splendid feast for both the ear and the intellect, sometimes pieces that are filled with experimental, even psychedelic textures. The credit for these soundscapes also goes to the musicians who work with Yelena Eckemoff.