Melissa Aldana - 12 Stars

A beautiful album by a player I first heard with the all-woman band Artemis. I'd planned to cover it in detail as 12 Stars is a tremendous album. However, the dreadful things that are happening in Ukraine have, somehow, taken my concentration away from the music as great as it is. So, I'll leave it to the press release below which I wholeheartedly go along with and hope that Melissa, my readers and the world will understand - Lance.

(Press release)

GRAMMY-nominated saxophonist and composer Melissa Aldana joins the Blue Note Records' family with the release of 12 Stars, her debut album as a leader for the legendary jazz label. At 32, the Brooklyn-based tenor player from Santiago, Chile has garnered international recognition for her visionary work as a band leader, as well as her deeply meditative interpretation of language and vocabulary. 

12 Stars grapples with concepts of child rearing, familial forgiveness, acceptance, and self-love. “This is a really important album for me,” says Aldana. “I felt like I had so much to say because of all the experiences I had during 2020. After the personal process I went through last year, I feel more connected to myself and my own imperfections — and I’ve discovered that it’s the same process with music. Embracing everything I hear, everything I play — even mistakes — is more meaningful than perfection.”

 

Throughout her career, Aldana has gravitated toward collaborators who let her sound exist and resonate without restraint. She develops profound connections with bandmates, and the personnel and producer she chose for 12 Stars is no exception. “I love playing with musicians that are strongly rooted in tradition but, at the same time, very open-minded when it comes to music,” she says. The album was produced by the Norwegian guitarist Lage Lund, who also performs as part of a remarkable quintet with Sullivan Fortner on piano and Fender Rhodes, Kush Abadey on drums, and Aldana’s longtime collaborator and confidant Pablo Menares on bass.

 

A sixth collaborator contributed the album artwork. Aldana asked her close friend, vocalist Cécile McLorin Salvant to share her talents as a visual artist for the release, and many of the album’s themes are manifested in Salvant’s sublime cover illustration. “It felt very natural for me to have her as part of this project,” says Aldana.  

 

Inspired by the arcs and nuances of tarot, 12 Stars features a series of tributes to moments of challenge and triumph in Aldana’s New York life. She titled the album after the 12 stars that adorn The Empress’ crown. “In numerology and tarot, The Empress is a symbol of creation,” she says. “She represents my essence as an individual, and this entire journey.” Aldana also sought to spotlight her vulnerabilities and celebrate them as part of her artistic process. Her decision to collaborate with Lund rendered Aldana vulnerable, so she chose to indulge that discomfort. 

 

“I’m allowing somebody to enter my music and move things around, which is something I’ve never done before,” she says. “But Lage knows me very well, and I knew that he would be the right person. I wanted to learn by watching his process, to see how he took my music and rearranged it to reflect how he thought about the album.” 

 

Just before the lockdown, Aldana separated from her husband. Alone in Harlem, she told herself she’d be busy for years, with plenty of distractions from dealing with her complex emotional response. “But then,” she says, “the pandemic hit, and I hit bottom.” She needed to make changes, so she turned inward. “Because of that personal process, I feel even more connected to my music.” Even the way she practiced changed, allowing her to explore new concepts and endure discomfort. 

 

Throughout 12 Stars, Aldana’s thoughtful development of bold, melodic statements reaches new levels of persistence. Engineered and mixed by James Farber at Samurai Hotel Studios in Queens, the tracks emit a warm clarity that serves Aldana’s intention. “I wanted to go to the studio and worry about the music and nothing else,” she says. “I knew having James there would allow us to do that.” The mix also features a kind of vertical depth Aldana credits Farber and Lund as having orchestrated intuitively. 

 

The album presents seven striking new original compositions that were co-written by Aldana and Lage including the opening piece “Falling,” which introduces Lund’s bold harmonic and textural presence immediately. Between statements and inquiries, Aldana develops her solo rapidly, Fortner’s spontaneity connecting to hers at every turn. “Intuition” proffers one of the album’s most striking melodies. At once commanding and conversational, the tune serves Aldana’s extended arcs of lyrical development. 

 

Named for the imagined daughter she met in a dream, “Emilia” features a haunting introduction from Lund and Menares, and a lingering melody line Aldana remembers singing to her dream child as a lullaby. “The Bluest Eye,” titled in tribute to Toni Morrison’s literary and cultural masterpiece, provides the musicians a prism for interactivity. Abadey’s reflexive energy pulses from one section to the next. Aldana’s solo intro to the album’s title track reveals a sound that contains multitudes — regret, determination, joy and acceptance. Exposed and unadorned, “12 Stars” presents Aldana at her most lyrical and contemplative. 

 

“Especially during quarantine, I spent so much time going super deep into sound,” she says. “I became very aware of what I like, what I don’t like — being very thoughtful about it. In this album, I can hear that I’ve moved one step forward with that. And that makes me feel very inspired to keep working on the sound and trying to find what I want to say.”