Tenor saxophonist Melissa Aldana won the Thelonious Monk jazz competition in 2013, not long after coming to the United States to study at Berklee from her native Chile. Sitting on the panel of judges was Wayne Shorter, one of the greatest living composers and music conceptualists. In the intervening decade, Aldana has blossomed in ways that Shorter would admire.
In particular, she has formed a fruitful partnership with another musical seer, much as Shorter discovered Joe Zawinul in the band Weather Report. Aldana’s playing on tenor has grown increasingly mutable and enigmatic. Early on, she seemed like an earnest pupil of Sonny Rollins. Now, on her second Blue Note release with a quintet featuring arranger, co-producer, and guitarist Lage Lund, she is making music stamped with searching originality.
Aldana’s first Blue Note recording, 2022’s 12 Stars, was superb — her second mature project after the terrific Visions from 2019. Echoes of the Inner Prophet features nearly the same band as on 12 Stars, with Lund’s guitar, bassist Pablo Menares, drummer Kush Abadey, and pianist Fabian Almazan replacing Sullivan Fortner. The new set sounds more confident and whole, almost like a suite of connected compositions that puts you deep in a mood and will not let go.
In her last outing, Aldana already seemed to be investigating Wayne Shorter’s techniques and compositional ideas. The homage here is more explicit (the title track is dedicated to the late master), but nothing like imitation. Principally, Lund and Aldana have composed and sculpted a set of themes that sound less like melodies with chord changes over time than sets of interlocking sound “pieces”. Yes, some are motifs or melodies (and some may be composed or improvised). Still, they are just as often rhythmic patterns or clouds of musical texture — as Lund’s electronic sounds are integral to many of these compositions.
“Unconscious Whispers” begins with Lund playing the most critical component, a toggling figure that falls downward in a hint of melancholy, which Aldana joins with a hushed tenor melody. These essentials aren’t followed by a chorus or bridge or B melody but seem to blend into variations as the whole band enters — a mixture of solutions, a swirling of particles that reveals the original portions now and again. Almazan’s solo follows a for, but one not defined by a circle of chord changes, and as it ends, Lund’s electronics appear, sweeping the performance into another phase.
The closing track, “I Know You Know”, uses electronics more overtly in the theme statement — with synthesized tones acting like a muted, tart, mysterious orchestral backing. I hear Shorter’s influence on this track more than anywhere else on Echoes. The use of synths on Shorter’s 1980s and 1990s studio albums is less evident than in his recent orchestral writing: sound palettes that resist outlining a plain harmony and allow the other instruments multiple directions for movement and resolution.
Suggesting a different side of Shorter’s writing, “I Know” is built atop a propulsive but subtle drum groove from Abadey that allows for funky bass line figures that launch and push along two dashing solos from Aldana and Lund. A similar interaction between melody and bass line is the hallmark of “The Solitary Seeker”, with Almazan’s acoustic piano supplying much of the punch as Lund’s guitar locks in to provide a dose of Brazilian groove that evokes, of course, Shorter’s Native Dancer. Both synth textures and melodic bass counterpoint are artfully critical to “A Purpose”.
As much as this lineage comes through, two of the finest performances show less overt debt. “Cone of Silence” moves with drama and a potent melody. “The Ritual” is a floating ballad, more conventional in format, but with a bevy of strengths. Aldana shapes her saxophone tone to be gauzy and flowing. Her solo, after a lovely outing from Merares’s bass, finds her bending notes away from their center, almost making the saxophone seem like a “fretless” horn that can easily play all the tones between the notes — though she unerringly gets back to ideal pitch each time. Lund’s guitar quietly limns the melody with her, an octave away, like a beautiful wraith.
In the end, the ghost in the machine of his exceptional recording is not any single influence but the working relationship between Aldana and Lund. Both voices play with fluency and creative confidence in moments of individual brilliance, but the power of Echoes of the Inner Prophet is in how Lund understands and crafts textures and sonorities for Aldana’s melodic ideas and her saxophone style. Interaction with and the sound crafted by the whole band brings it together so that this partnership feels like one musical imagination, not another “quintet” record.
Egos be damned, despite the scintillating improvisations, which creates balance we all need more of.