Having delayed for performing at CSUN for 3 years due to the COVID lockdown, tenor saxist Melissa Aldana was finally able to bring her Quartet to perform as part of the Jazz at Naz festival. Both artist and audience were in an enthusiastic mood for the anticipated event, and both left after the 2 hour set satisfied.
Performing mostly material from her most recent album 12 Stars, Aldana brought on stage bassist Pablo Menares, drummer Kush Abadey and pianist Gadi Lehavi, with the latter setting the mood for the evening with a haunting solo chorus to the title piece before Aldana’s patented sighing sax wafted in gentle agony. Aldana’s style of restrained gasping veered around Menares’ prominent lead on the elliptical etude while she mixed subtones and impassioned altissimo shrieks over Abadey’s restless undercurrent of the militaristic “Intuition”. The team jabbed back and forth around Lehavi’s bluesy piano solo, with “Bluest Eyes” going in a jaunty direction leading to a fierce climax with Aldana’s sax hitting the stratosphere in pungent accents.
Aldana’s sighing and crying moans worked best on brooding pieces like the melancholy “Ritual”, with Lehavi stretching out over the ivories on his sonata of a solo, while “Intention” had him in full fisted form during the trio interlude of “Intention”. The team asserted themselves on the easy post bopper “Los Osos le Chile”, as Aldana led the charged with long held shrieks over Abadey’s whipping of the ride cymbal in playful punishment., bringing shouts of enthusiasm from the full house.
Aldana and company closed things up with a fragrant and spacious “Emilia”, laconically floating over Lehavi’s nocturnes and Abadey’s mallets, letting the evening end with a reflective mist.
Musical emotions carried the evening, with each song representing a mood of reflection and passion. It’s rare for an artist so early in career to have such an identifiable sound, but Aldana has been able to achieve this fete, bringing in ideas and sounds from her Chilean background and her own fertile imagination. Judging by the response of the evening’s audience, it is a sound that includes a vision.
The Jazz at Naz series continues with Joel Ross 02/10 and The Clayton-Hamilton Jazz Orchestra with Samara Joy 02/11, followed by Charles Lloyd 03/18