Melissa Aldana - Echoes of the Inner Prophet / vinyl LP

On her sophomore album for Blue Note, 2024's deeply enveloping Echoes of the inner Prophet, tenor saxophonist Melissa Aldana pays homage to her idol, the late Wayne Shorter.

The album is the follow-up to 2022's Grammy-nominated 12 Stars and again finds the Chilean-born improviser working in close collaboration with guitarist Lage Lund. Also on board this time are pianist Fabian Almazan (taking over for Sullivan Fortner), bassist Pablo Menares, and drummer Kush Abadey. While Shorter's work is a clear influence for Aldana on Echoes of the Inner Prophet, she never sounds overly indebted to him and instead uses his work as inspiration for her own artful and distinctive playing.

The title track is specifically dedicated to Shorter, who sat on the judging panel when Aldana won the 2013 Thelonious Monk International Jazz Saxophone Competition. The song, as with much of the album, nicely brings to mind the moody lyricism and spectral harmonic qualities that the legendary saxophonist, composer, and Miles Davis band alum was known for. This is especially true of his albums like 1969's Super Nova and 1974's Moto Grosso Feio, productions where Shorter danced at the edges of avant-garde modalism, Brazilian jazz, and electric fusion, foreshadowing his groundbreaking work with Weather Report.

Here, Aldana similarly dances on a stylistic edge, pushing towards ambient soundscapes, classical, and folk traditions, just as her playing and her group's sound is the epitome of acoustic post-bop jazz. Another similarity Aldana shares with Shorter is a warm, tremulously soft, vocal-like tone on lithe improvisational lines that seem to rise, flutter, and dive through a song like a bird through clouds. It's a gentle yet powerful style and one that often pulls you deeper into a song's atmosphere.

With his equally bird-like fretwork, pecking and fastidious one second and soaring through harmonic sunlight the next, Lund is a sympathetic collaborator for Aldana. There's an organic, almost nature-like quality to their work, as on "Unconscious Whispers," where his muted notes fall like rain on a window before Aldana and the band come rushing in like a summer storm. Similarly, on "A Purpose," Aldana and Lund play the soulful, R&B-esque melody in unison, meshing their sounds like trees in a fall breeze. With Echoes of the Inner Prophet, Aldana has crafted a gorgeously Zen album that finds her listening as much to the spirit of Shorter as to her own inner artistic voice.

Matt Collar