Rachel Eckroth
Pianist | Vocalist | Keyboardist | Composer | Arranger
Polymath (noun): a person of wide-ranging knowledge or learning.
Music needs a term for this. What do you call one person who is a pianist, vocalist, keyboardist, composer, producer, arranger, band leader, sideman and more? Music may not have a term, but it does have a name: Rachel Eckroth.
Eckroth can lead with a bold vision or accompany with the subtle skills necessary to make another musician shine. Her combination of jazz experimentation and pop feeling form the engine behind her own work as a leader/co-leader on almost 20 albums, most recently The Garden on Rainy Days Records (2021) and an upcoming solo piano album titled ‘One”. That same crossover talent is why she's been featured on voice and keyboards in the bands of Rufus Wainwright, St. Vincent, KT Tunstall, and Chris Botti.
Eckroth has been a busy recording artist throughout her career, and the pace has only increased in recent years. In 2020, Eckroth appeared on the single "Circling" by Donny McCaslin, the acclaimed saxophonist from David Bowie's final band. That same year, she released three singles of her own. In 2021 she and her husband, bassist Tim Lefebvre (David Bowie, Tedeschi Trucks Band) put out a duet album called The Blackbird Sessions. She also released the single "Moot Points" featuring Alassane, as well as an eponymous EP featuring her own songs.
Her work as a composer and arranger started in Las Vegas, arranging for horn and string sections with local artists. While working on a degree at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Rachel penned numerous compositions for Jazz Ensemble and her own experimental nonet. In 2002, she joined the BMI Jazz Composer’s workshop in New York led by Jim McNeely, and further worked in this idiom. Since earning a Master’s degree in Jazz Performance from Rutgers University, Rachel has traveled the world as an artist, composer, and singer, involved in different projects with Universities, and cowriting and/or arranging with Tia Fuller, Donny McCaslin, Hues, and others.
Rachel’s most well known project, The Garden, complete with a Grammy Nomination in 2021, features 8 tracks written or co-written by Eckroth. The band includes Lefebvre and McCaslin along with drummer Christian Euman, guitarist Nir Felder.