Some of the most inspired jazz happens in front of an audience, but that's a double-edged sword when there's a global pandemic. When live music was plunged into uncertainty and musicians lost their incomes, their creative drive sometimes went with them. But not Melissa Aldana's.
Rather than needing human energy feedback to stoke her creative fires, Aldana's imagination is self-propelled — a perpetual motion machine.
"The pandemic didn't change the way I'd be practicing," the Chile-born tenor saxophonist tells GRAMMY.com. "Even though I acknowledge the audience and there's an energy interchange when there's people there, to me, music isn't really about something external more than something internal, that's personal."
The lockdown coincided with the dissolution of a long-term relationship, leaving a despairing Aldana to embark on a period of self-analysis. Those upheavals switched on her creative machine, resulting in music that opens a window into her psyche.
Her new album, 12 Stars — which arrived March 4 — marks her debut on arguably the king of jazz labels: Blue Note Records. Therein, highlights like "Falling," "The Bluest Eye" and "Los Ojos de Chile" thread her experiences through her mastery of her musical language. And her accompanists — guitarist Lage Lund, pianist Sullivan Fortner, bassist Pablo Menares, and drummer Kush Abadey — help them pulse with vitality and purpose.
Despite being the consummate practicer, Aldana's approach is never overly slick — her fingerprints are perceptible on every note. "After the personal process I went through, I feel more connected to myself and my own imperfections — and I've discovered that it's the same process with music," Aldana said in a press release. "Embracing everything I hear, everything I play — even mistakes — is more meaningful than perfection."
"She's extraordinary," Blue Note Records president Don Was tells GRAMMY.com. "Man, just her tone — that's what really got to me. The sound she gets out of the horn. She's a beautiful singer, and that's what really spoke to me." Whether you're a jazz neophyte or an expert — or Aldana's story just piques your curiosity — 12 Stars has the potential to speak to you, too.
GRAMMY.com sat down with Aldana to discuss the origin of 12 Stars, the sometimes-painful process of self-realization and how it felt to join the storied lineage of Blue Note Records.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Tell me about your relationship with Blue Note Records over the years. I'm sure the label was foundational to you as a young musician.
Yeah, I grew up listening to all of Sonny Rollins' albums from Blue Note and did so many transcriptions, you know? From a lot of people I really looked up to, like Joe Henderson and Sam Rivers.
What were your favorite Blue Note records growing up?
Sonny Rollins, A Night at the Village Vanguard. Sam Rivers' trio albums.
Was Rollins your guy, as far as finding your way around the horn?
I think it was mostly Charlie Parker for so many years, and when I changed to tenor, Sonny was one of my biggest influences. It's like Sonny, Don Byas, Benny Golson, Mark [Turner] and Paul Gonsalves are my main guys.
I saw your take on Charlie Parker's "Just Friends" solo on Instagram the other day.
Yeah, I learned that when I was, like, 10 years old. I started listening to things from back then, finding different ways of thinking about them.
What was your vision for the compositions on 12 Stars? What did you want to impart to listeners on an emotional level?
12 Stars comes from a crown [worn by] the Empress on the tarot card — it's the third Major Arcana. When I had a strong personal crisis among everything that was happening globally, I started getting into the history of tarot symbols and studying numerology, trying to make sense of my own process.
As I was going through different information and getting to know myself, I decided to write a tune about part of the process. I wasn't even thinking that it would become my next album; I just wanted to find a way to analyze what I was feeling.
So, I started writing the tune "12 Stars" at the very beginning of the pandemic, and I finished it in December, after we decided all the music we were going to have for the album. It talks about the completion of a cycle — trying to find meaning through tarot.
The interesting thing about it is that tarot, astrology, numerology and religions all talk about the same thing. The journey of the soul and its purpose on this earth. So, that's the main inspiration for the album.
It sounds like 12 Stars was the product of a period of gnarly introspection for you.
Yeah, absolutely. I started thinking about how it would become an album, and also started taking tarot lessons and writing a song about each of the Arcanas.
I was lucky enough to still be able to play with Pablo [Menares] and Kush [Abadey] every week. So, I would get the right tunes — we would start it one way and change it a lot. And then, Lage [Lund] also rearranged it.
I think it was a process of the band, you know? Me, Lage and Pablo. We basically developed all the music together to cheer up during the pandemic.
What spurred that period of introspection? You've mentioned that "Falling" was about a time where it felt like things were coming undone in your life.
Just personal changes. That tune was also inspired by the 15th Major Arcana, which is a tower. And the tower [card] talks about the moment in your life where you realize where the things you thought were stable, are not. I had been living with this idea of something and not really acknowledging "Who am I?"
So, the pandemic hit. I lost all my work. I broke a long relationship that I had for many years. And then, I was totally alone. As much as I like to practice and study and read, there was a moment where my body was like, "No. You just need to feel this and process this." So, I wrote the tune called "Falling" to describe that process in my life.
How did you get through this devastating period for musicians — with the social isolation and loss of income that it entailed?
One good thing is that I've always been the most organized person when it comes to money, and very thoughtful about the idea that "I want to live in New York and grow older, but I don't want to rent for the rest of my life. When I retire, I want to feel comfortable so I can enjoy what I do."
Since I was very young, I'd saved money. So, when the pandemic hit, of course, I lost all my income, but the economic part wasn't really the biggest issue. And then, for the inspiration part, I can always be inspired, you know? I can be thoughtful about my process and try to be very present in the way I feel about music.
Inspiration is something I can cultivate every day by my actions or the way I wake up, what I listen to, you know? I can always spend these hours. I can memorize solos; that's not the issue.
Even though I acknowledge the audience and there's an energy interchange when there's people there, to me, music isn't really about something external more than something internal, that's personal. The pandemic didn't change the way I'd be practicing.
Whereas some musicians would experience creative death from not being able to play live, your energy comes from an internal, self-propelling engine.
Yeah. Also, I'm very strong. I wasn't going to have gigs, but I was [going to] take this time to grow. But as important as it is for me to practice, there wasn't a lot of work on my practice because I was feeling really bad. I was depressed, not having human contact. Just getting separated all of a sudden.
Nobody knew what would happen, so there was all this anxiety on top of the personal thing. I couldn't practice for 12 hours, so I had to learn how to talk and see myself, and accept the way I felt and dig into my patterns: "What am I doing to make me fall into the same thing? What is the lesson there?" You can practice as much as you can, but if you don't accept the way you see your music, there's never going to be growth.
In my relationship with tarot, religion, myth — the myth of the phoenix and this idea that you have to die in order to be reborn — to me, there's something really important when it comes to music. I'm practicing all the notes that I have, as much language as I can, so I can grow from the mistakes.
So, I can see the parallel between those two things over the past year. [Corrects self] Two years.
What books did you absorb during this process of self-realization?
I started reading a book written by [Alejandro] Jodorowsky, who is one of the most well-known people that has done a lot of therapeutic tarot sessions. So, I started reading about that, and then I started to get into Joseph Campbell — the myth of the hero — and Carl Jung.
I also started watching a lot of documentaries and astrology videos. A bunch of different sources on things that make me passionate about. But yeah, Joseph Campbell is definitely one of my biggest inspirations.
Campbell's archetype of the protagonist surging forward through adversities reminds me of a lot of jazz musicians.
Absolutely. You can apply it to so many things. And then, when you go into the history of myth, then you can go into the history of tarot, which is Carl Jung and his whole way of thinking about the archetypes.
Tell me about the period after this transformative season of life, when you connected with Don Was and began your Blue Note journey.
I'm extremely lucky to have one of the best managers ever. She always supports my vision and what I want to do. So, we started talking about the idea of signing with Blue Note. I wanted to find a record label, and I just had the feeling it would be the right thing to do.
My manager helped me through the process of talking to Don Was, and I also have the history because of [all-women supergroup and Blue Note signees] Artemis. So, I feel like everything was leading toward that. This was around August of 2020.
Was there a sense of pressure to live up to the Blue Note legacy?
No, this feels very natural. It makes me really happy. I have felt the pressure of always having a story and something that is interesting. But rather than just mentioning that this is inspired by the Major Arcana, it's important to me as a human being that is 33 to share my personal experience. Which I think is something that all of us deal with around this age — changes and things like that.
So, I just wanted to do something that really resonated with me, and that's the album.
How did you choose who would accompany you on 12 Stars?
Pablo's been my bass player for my whole life. I really believe in the idea of having a band. I remember that when I moved to New York, I always wondered what would be success for me — what would be my vision.
And my vision has always been being able to take my guys on a month, two-month tour and be able to develop a sound as a band, which is really rare these days — to have that kind of opportunity.
To me, creative relationships and strong bonds with the people I play with are really important. So, first of all, all of these guys are my very, very close friends. And during the pandemic, we were all going through a lot of personal things. Pablo and Kush were alone. So, we spent a lot of time just hanging, cooking and playing for hours — drinking and I-don't-know-what.
It's never been a doubt for me that I would record with those guys. I always wanted to find the band, and I think I found it with Lage, Pablo and Kush. And then, I love Sullivan's playing. He's one of my close friends too. I wanted to have his vision of what the music would be.
I felt that all of us were strongly rooted in the tradition, which, to me, is really important. I want that element in my music, because that's where we're coming from. But I like people who have the freedom to be vulnerable and bring who they are into the music. I was really lucky to find the perfect group of people to be part of the process.
Tell me about "Emilia." Who's that tune named after?
I started having a lot of crazy dreams during the pandemic, in the beginning. But I had one that repeated many times. It was this dream where I was a mom and I had a daughter, and I was trying to make her fall asleep. Every night, I would sing a melody. And I remembered the name, Emilia. That was super clear.
One night, I woke up with the melody in my head and I wrote it down. It's a tune I wrote for the daughter that I don't have.
And "Los Ojos de Chile" seems like a pretty deliberate reference to your roots.
Chile has something called the Estallido Social. Since 2019, there's been a lot of crazy political changes happening. Very positive, at the end of the day. It was one of the first times I felt I was part of something bigger. I felt Chilean, and I was so proud to see people stand up for what they believed — their rights.
Back then, we wanted to do a concert where we would raise money for a foundation for people that lost their sight during the protests. While they were protesting, the cops were shooting tear gas.
When we played the concert, I wanted to write something that related to the feeling in that moment. It was a big moment where I understood what identity was for me. It was something I always questioned: "Where am I from?" Which is totally related to the whole process that started during the pandemic.
I love the cover art by Cécile McLorin Salvant. Can you talk about that?
Cécile is one of my closest, closest friends. We talk a lot, and she knows my story really well. We've shared so many moments that, when I did the album, I didn't want a photo of me on the cover. I wanted to have something that represented all the things that happened to me in a visual way.
We had a lot of exchanges of ideas — listening to Carl Jung about the myth and having a lot of talks about that. I just knew that the way she knows me and what this album was about meant she would be the best person to describe it. So, she did the cover.
It even has avocados on the cover, if you notice. The avocados are a big part of who I am as a Chilean person. I thought she did a really good presentation of what I was feeling at the moment and what I wanted to express on the album.
If you were to summarize your Chilean identity in a few words, how would you do so?
Chile happens to be the place where I grew up and the culture I was around, so of course, it shaped the person I am. But my personal experiences have to do with my family, relationships and story.
Before, I thought that being Chilean meant I had to write in Yahgan, and write music related to that. But it's not that. My Chilean identity is my own experience living there, and it's unique to me.
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