Melissa Aldana - Echoes Of The Inner Prophet

Styles: Saxophone Jazz
Year: 2024
Time: 42:53
File: MP3 @ 320K/s
Size: 98,5 MB
Art: Front

(2:57) 1. Echoes Of The Inner Prophet
(6:49) 2. Unconscious Whispers
(6:08) 3. A Story
(6:08) 4. The Solitary Seeker
(4:02) 5. Ritual
(4:59) 6. A Purpose
(5:18) 7. Cone of Silence
(6:29) 8. I Know You Know

Grammy-nominated saxophonist Melissa Aldana was all of maybe 21 going on 22 in 2010 when her Inner Circle Records arrival, Free Fall, caught many a discerning ear with its surprisingly earthy and assured lines and tangents. Her first for Blue Note, 2022's 12 Stars, displayed much the same but with a more resolute, restorative, established tone.

As exhibited on such artistic statements as 12 Stars and 2019's Visions (Motema Music), Aldana relishes her sojourns and residencies in the inner world. Echoes Of The Inner Prophet is the next chapter in the journey. But it is not just a step or a stride but a leap. Amorphous, calligraphic, and bursting with ideas that are given breadth to blend and clash, color and collaborate, music like the luxurious, collective narrative "A Story" comes into clear, clean view. Taking its drive and tempo shifts from the concentrated yet open-ended interplay of pianist Fabian Almazan and guitarist/co-producer/arranger Lage Lund (with whom Aldana enjoys an especially keen symbiosis) her tenor vibes and calls bask in joy interspersed with a common sadness.

But before that and before the tightly woven leadoff single "The Solitary Seeker," Echoes Of The Inner Prophet breaks to the surface with its title track rippling like breezes across a still lake. As if summoning Wayne Shorter, who was one of the judges (along with Branford Marsalis and Jane Ira Bloom) who awarded Aldana first prize in the 2013 Thelonious Monk International Jazz Saxophone Competition, Aldana's true proven tenor vibes sound warm and decisive amid Almazan and Lund's electronics, drummer Kush Abadey's concerted participation and bassist Pablo Menares' nimble reverberations.

Aldana's "Unconscious Whispers" follows. It is a five-way conversation where everyone is heard and no one's voice is turned away or interrupted. Sure, Almazan and Abadey mix up the dance steps here and there, but that by no means interrupts or sidetracks Lund, Menares, and Aldana, who find their footing and hold the center. The saxophonist's sound, rich and radiant, equal parts Sonny Rollins, Shorter, and the soulful party blues of Cannonball Adderley's alto, grows more and more familiar, distinct and, much more importantly, her own. It is rigorous but not without smudges and blurs of composition and style, "A Purpose," with its punchy, kinetic grace; "Cone of Silence," its closing time melodics falling fondly upon the ear; and Lund's quirky, reminiscent-of-something-you-may-have-heard-before closer "I Know You Know" make Echoes Of The Inner Prophet a sure-fire best of '24 contender. Listen closely. By Mike Jurkovic
https://www.allaboutjazz.com/echoes-of-the-inner-prophet-melissa-aldana-blue-note-records

Personnel: Melissa Aldana - (tenor saxophone); Fabian Almazan - (piano); Lage Lund - (guitar); Pablo Menares - (bass); Kush Abadey - (drums)

Echoes Of The Inner Prophet

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Melissa Aldana - Visions

Styles: Saxophone Jazz
Year: 2019
Time: 67:35
File: MP3 @ 320K/s
Size: 156,8 MB
Art: Front

(8:13) 1. Visions
(4:57) 2. Acceptance
(6:03) 3. La Madrina
(3:43) 4. Perdon
(2:37) 5. Abre Tus Ojos
(5:58) 6. Elsewhere
(8:27) 7. Dos Casas, Un Puente
(6:29) 8. Never Let Me Go
(6:29) 9. The Search
(5:26) 10. Su Trajedia
(9:09) 11. El Castillo de Velenje

Compositional and instrumental virtuosity always walks along a razor's edge between self-indulgence and purposeful accomplishment. On Visions, sought after saxophonist Melissa Aldana proves that she doesn't only master balancing this edge but that she can also go beyond the complexities of structure, scales and improvisation and naturally create her very own musical aesthetic. In interplay with an all-star cast of equally dynamic sidemen Sam Harris on keys, Pablo Menares on bass, as well as drummer Tommy Crane and Joel Ross adding some melodic embellishments on vibraphone Aldana lives up to great expectations and then some.

As opposed to what might be expected from her, due to her being of Chilean descent and the album being largely inspired by the work of Mexican artist Frida Kahlo, the compositions here don't burst of Latin American influence, neither in their rhythmic nor melodic nature, but only subtly incorporate some of those elements. However, the opening title track is everything but subtle, and immediately confronts the listener with the hard-bopping talents at hand. A harmonically as well as rhythmically intricate head is introduced by sax and vibes in unison while piano and drums restlessly stack patterns to lively bass stabs.

Here and throughout the album, Harris' piano accompaniment as well as solo improvisation show just how far his harmonic understanding reaches and how deeply into the tradition of his idols most prominently Thelonious Monk he is able to dig. The slight dissonances that derive from his harmonic framing are rebelliously undermined by Tommy Crane's ferocious drumming.

Even on the quieter takes, such as ballads "Abre Tus Ojos" or "Never Let Me Go," the sole standard on this set, the band plays with an urgency that is contagious. Harris' chromatic harmonic side stepping on the latter tune emulates a smirk that is as sassy as they come, reminiscent of his contemporary Sullivan Fortner in style and temperament.

Speed and quantity of notes are characteristics Aldana couldn't care less about. Her playing is subtle and elegant and of a highly melodic nature while the saxophone's tone is contrastingly dry in the mix, thereby not the center of attention but part of the whole, like any color in camouflage. Contrary to camouflage however, the colorful palette on display here is everything other than inconspicuous. It has the flashy traits of fauvism mixed with the neon of Warhol and a graceful finish like fine brush strokes on canvas. Melissa Aldana's Visions proves itself a highlight of this year. By Friedrich Kunzmann
https://www.allaboutjazz.com/visions-melissa-aldana-motema-music-review-by-friedrich-kunzmann

Personnel: Melissa Aldana: tenor saxophone; Joel Ross: vibraphone; Sam Harris: piano; Pablo Menares: bass; Tommy Crane: drums.

Visions

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Melissa Aldana - 12 Stars

Styles: Saxophone
File: MP3@320K/s
Time: 45:01
Size: 103,4 MB
Art: Front

(6:22) 1. Falling
(7:30) 2. Intuition
(0:38) 3. Intro to Emilia
(7:35) 4. Emilia
(7:22) 5. The Bluest Eye
(6:50) 6. The Fool
(5:41) 7. Los Ojos de Chile
(2:59) 8. 12 Stars

Before we get into tenor saxophonist Melissa Aldana's album which is excellent, so hang on in there a word about press releases and publicity campaigns. Specifically, those from Blue Note.

The label's headquarters in Los Angeles is in danger of becoming known for award-winning b.s. in this regard, as demonstrated during the campaign for Aldana's label debut. Here is an example: 12 Stars, we are told, "grapples with concepts of childrearing, familial forgiveness, acceptance, and self-love." Given that there is not one spoken word on the entire album, or any clues in the track titles, this is a fatuous statement. Heaven knows what Alfred Lion would have thunk.

On to better things. Aldana fronts a quintet which includes three members of the quartet she has led since 2017: guitarist Lage Lund, who also produced and who co-wrote with Aldana all but the thirty-nine second snippet "Intro To Emilia," bassist Pablo Menares (who wrote "Intro To Emilia") and drummer Kush Abadey. The fifth member is pianist Sullivan Fortner.

Aldana studied with George Garzone at Berklee and, after graduating, moved to New York to study with George Coleman. She names both players as "dear friends" in the album credits but, since debuting with Free Fall (Inner Circle, 2010), she has developed a style which outwardly owes little to either of them. It could be described as "active meditation" in that it comes across as inward looking but is infused with a degree of energy and movement not normally part of meditation practice. It is, perhaps, the cerebral version of another apparent oxymoron, "hot yoga."

Anyway, call it what you will, Aldana has got it down. So, too, her sound, which most often inhabits the middle and upper registers of the tenor, entirely avoiding harmonics and broken or vocalized tones. It is a pure, clean, athletic sound, with just a trace of vibrato on extended notes. Aldana is the key soloist throughout and so beautiful is her playing, and so inventive her ideas, that Lund and Fortner's occasional brief solos almost (almost) seem like a distraction. Fortner swaps the acoustic piano for a Rhodes on two tracks, on which he and Lund, who is credited with "gizmos" as well as guitar, conjure an enjoyably trippy ambiance. 12 Stars merits a solid four stars.~Chris May https://www.allaboutjazz.com/12-stars-melissa-aldana-blue-note-records15648

Personnel: Melissa Aldana: saxophone; Lage Lund: guitar; Pablo Menares: bass; Sullivan Fortner: piano; Kush Abadey: drums.

12 Stars

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Cécile McLorin Salvant - The Window

Styles: Vocal
Year: 2018
File: MP3@320K/s
Time: 70:22
Size: 162,1 MB
Art: Front

(5:11)  1. Visions
(2:09)  2. One Step Ahead
(2:34)  3. By Myself
(4:55)  4. The Sweetest Sounds
(5:53)  5. Ever Since The One I Love's Been Gone
(2:05)  6. A Clef
(3:10)  7. Obsession
(3:21)  8. Wild Is Love
(3:00)  9. J'ai L'Cafard
(7:10) 10. Somewhere
(4:29) 11. The Gentleman Is A Dope
(3:47) 12. Trouble Is A Man
(3:20) 13. Were Thine That Special Face
(5:00) 14. I've Got Your Number
(3:28) 15. Tell Me Why
(1:10) 16. Everything I've Got Belongs To You
(9:34) 17. The Peacocks

Cécile McLorin Salvant has one of the most powerful voices in jazz. Which doesn't make her always easy to listen to. Sometimes she instills new meaning to an old lyric, other times she tries too hard and goes over the top. Still, at least she tries. She comes from Miami, daughter of a Haitian father and a French mother. Aware of the power of her voice from an early age, she trained in classical music, but then fell in love with the voice of Sarah Vaughan when she was 14. "I just wanted to sound as much like her as I possibly could," she recalls. She went on to win an assortment of awards, including, in 2010, the Thelonious Monk International Jazz Vocals Competition, and attracted rave reviews. Wynton Marsalis says of her, "You get a singer like this once in a generation or two." That's a maybe. Singers that impress you are not necessarily those you'll want to hear again and again. Especially when they go into diva screech mode. But McLorin Salvant says: "I never wanted to sound clean and pretty. In jazz, I felt I could sing these deep, husky lows if I want, and then these really tiny, laser highs if I want, as well." On The Window, her fifth album, she is accompanied on nearly all tracks by pianist Sullivan Fortner. On only one, "The Peacocks," is anyone else present, this being Melissa Albana playing wispy tenor saxophone. The sparse setting grows tiresome. Highlights? There are plenty: "Ever Since The One I Love's Been Gone," singing to a live audience; "Wild Is Love," "The Gentleman Is A Dope," "Trouble Is A Man" and "I've Got Your Number" and "Everything I've Got Belongs To You." On Richard Rodgers' "The Sweetest Sounds," she is upstaged by a magnificent solo by Fortner. She sings in French on two numbers, her own "A Clef" and "J'ai L'Cafard," on which Fortner plays organ. Leonard Bernstein's "Somewhere," from West Side Story, suffers from being given the big treatment and "Were Thine That Special Face" is Cole Porter at his most precious and should have been left in the dusty vault from which it was taken. ~ Chris Mosey https://www.allaboutjazz.com/the-window-cecile-mclorin-salvant-mack-avenue-records-review-by-chris-mosey.php

Personnel: Cecile McLorin Salvant: vocals; Sullivan Fortner: piano; Melissa Aldana: tenor saxophone.

The Window

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Melissa Aldana - Second Cycle

Styles: Saxophone Jazz
Year: 2012
File: MP3@320K/s
Time: 73:59
Size: 169,7 MB
Art: Front

( 7:54)  1. Ellemeno
( 6:23)  2. Meeting Them
( 9:11)  3. Liquiescence
( 6:21)  4. First Cycle
( 4:56)  5. Second Cycle
( 7:10)  6. Free Fall
( 5:25)  7. My Own World
( 7:15)  8. Polyphemus
( 7:24)  9. I'll Be Seeing You
(11:54) 10. L Line

Melissa Aldana may still be in her early twenties, but the tenor saxophonist already knows what it is like to play with big jazz names like saxophonists George Coleman, Benny Golson and George Garzone. In a short time, Aldana has found her own place in the difficult New York jazz scene because she has developed a new voice that has commanded the attention of both the public and her peers. An obvious talent, one which made Greg Osby stand up and take notice when he first heard her at Boston's Berklee College of Music, combined with a marked perseverance and meticulous study routine is the formula that has brought her to the front line of jazz. She says that Don Byas, Mark Turner, Joe Lovano and Walter Smith III are the four saxophonists who really made her change how she approaches her career, but she continues to keep a close eye on the primary jazz legends. 

Aldana recorded her second album, Second Cycle (2012), for Osby's Inner Circle Music imprint (as she did her first), and she travelled to Spain to perform it, along with drummer Francisco Mela and bassist Dee Jay Foster. She started this short tour with the closing concert of Valencia's Jimmy Glass International Jazz Festival, clearly happy return after after two years. And despite being absorbed in the promotion of her new CD, this enterprising saxophonist is also working with a new trio featuring Mela and bassist Pablo Menares. This project will be debuted in January, 2013 at the New York Jazz Gallery. ~ Marta Ramon   http://www.allaboutjazz.com/melissa-aldana-living-a-second-cycle-melissa-aldana-by-marta-ramon.php#.U5oGTiioqdk

Second Cycle

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Artemis - Artemis

Styles: Jazz, Post Bop
Year: 2020
File: MP3@320K/s
Time: 51:54
Size: 119,6 MB
Art: Front

(7:24)  1. Goddess Of The Hunt
(7:20)  2. Frida
(6:12)  3. The Fool On The Hill
(5:01)  4. Big Top
(3:27)  5. If It's Magic
(5:27)  6. Nocturno
(6:25)  7. Step Forward
(5:29)  8. Cry, Buttercup, Cry
(5:05)  9. The Sidewinder

It's truly exhilarating yet sadly mundane and reductive that a recording as vital and victorious as Artemis will be universally hailed as a first from an all- female supergroup. That it cuts across all generational, cultural, international, and ethnic planes. That Blue Note Records has expanded its ever legendary ranks to include, well, you know, a female supergroup. It's like the more we think we've gotten past these worn, tired types of qualifiers we realize all the more we really haven't.

Until that day we no longer feel the need to identify such things, we turn, as every society does, to our artists to lead, and lead Artemis does. How could it not when pianist and musical director Renee Rosnes joins equally fierce forces with tenor saxophonist Melissa Aldana, clarinetist Anat Cohen, trumpeter Ingrid Jensen, drummer Allison Miller, bassist Noriko Ueda, and featured vocalist Cecile McLorin Salvant for a tough, tight and tenacious nine song set that catches fire immediately with Miller's "Goddess of the Hunt." A wily composition that brings each member to the fore without breaking the ensemble's inherent integrity. On "Goddess of the Hunt" propelled by Rosnes' and Ueda's insistence and Miller's persistence Aldana and Jensen run the gamut as Cohen binds it all together. It's a kick-off not to be to missed.

Aldana's precocious "Frida," one of the tunes the saxophonist didn't include on her emotionally weighted study suite of the painter Frida Kahlo, Visions (Motema, 2019) weaves more space for the five to establish both an intrinsic group synergy and individual personality. Never opting out for ego's sake, Jensen's intricate rendering of John Lennon and Paul McCartney's "The Fool On the Hill" allows for each voice to freely interpret one of rock's greatest ruminations with a real time urgency for the real time absurdity we live through daily. All five minutes of Rosnes' finger snapping, toe tapping "Big Top" is sheer joy to listen to and a virtuoso testament by the septet to the Greek goddess that inspires them. Salvant makes a stunning entrance with Stevie Wonder's elegant 1977 ballad "If It's Magic." Cohen, whose high flights of fancy and in depth explorations of shadow and light throughout the album almost steals the whole show, brings the contemplative "Nocturno" for each player to color. In stark contrast of mood and style, Ueda's punchy swing-fest "Step Forward" lets us marvel at Cohen's acrobatics, Jensen's lyrical agility, and Rosnes' whimsical sense of light. It's a remarkably fluid piece. Which is a fine way to describe the whole of this debut by a crew of veterans. Inspired by the times around them, Artemis returns the inspiration tenfold.~ Mark Jurkovic https://www.allaboutjazz.com/artemis-artemis-blue-note

Personnel:  Renee Rosnes: piano; Allison Miller: drums; Melissa Aldana: saxophone, tenor; Noriko Ueda: bass; Ingrid Jensen: trumpet; Cecile McLorin Salvant: voice / vocals; Anat Cohen: clarinet, bass.

Artemis

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Melissa Aldana & Crash Trio - Melissa Aldana & Crash Trio

Styles: Saxophone Jazz
Year: 2014
File: MP3@320K/s
Time: 52:38
Size: 120,7 MB
Art: Front

(4:58)  1. M&M
(5:45)  2. Turning
(5:34)  3. You’re My Everything
(5:09)  4. Bring Him Home
(6:08)  5. Tirapie
(5:49)  6. Peace, Love & Music
(4:19)  7. Perdon
(6:39)  8. New Points
(3:57)  9. Dear Joe
(4:15) 10. Ask Me Now

Chilean tenor saxophonist and composer Melissa Aldana was the first female to win the Thelonious Music International Institute's competition for saxophone. Though her two previous recordings were noteworthy as showcases for her soloing and compositions, it is with Crash Trio Chilean bassist Pablo Menares and Cuban drummer Francisco Mela (both are also composers) that she shines brightest. Save for readings of Harry Warren's "You're My Everything" and a tenor solo on Monk's "Ask Me Now," the entire program was written by the trio's various members. Aldana possesses a big, earthy, edgy tone deeply influenced by Sonny Rollins, but her phrasing is her own. While swinging post-bop is predominant, forward-thinking harmonic ideas informed by composers/musicians Kurt Rosenwinkel and Mark Turner add balance to the attack.

Aldana's "M&M" features a stellar walking bassline from Menares and a tight, hard-grooving head from the saxophonist. She explores its various individual elements, recombining them and moving them afield in her solo. The long, folk-like bass solo intro to Menares' "Tirapie" is gorgeous and gives way to a minor-key, midtempo, Latin-tinged ballad that showcases the canny interplay of the rhythm section. Aldana's solo is nearly song-like. Mela's "Dear Joe" kicks off with a bright, Caribbean rhythmic signature, and Menares and Aldana paint a knotty, joyous carnivalesque melody. The taut arpeggios in the saxophonist's solo take place in all three registers with soulful verve as Mela's accents, fills, and rimshot rolls alongside his cruising ride cymbal create an infectious, nearly danceable groove. Aldana's "New Points" is breezily and gently informed by Brazilian samba. 

On the Monk tune, she displays tremendous control and an avid imagination that keeps the composer's melody firmly at the root of her investigation. Melissa Aldana & Crash Trio is fresh, sophisticated, invigorating modern jazz that deserves notice for its fine tunes and seamless execution. ~ Thom Jurek  http://www.allmusic.com/album/melissa-aldana-crash-trio-mw0002637150 

Melissa Aldana & Crash Trio

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