Author Archives: Jon Iverson

Luisi serves up forthright yet unusually cultivated Nielsen. His suave manner, a bit like Rattle’s, smooths the music’s rougher edges; he doesn’t overplay, literally or figuratively, such characteristic gestures as the obsessive short motifs (ostinato, indeed!). In contrast to the Briton, Luisi does this without sacrificing propulsion, energy, or vivid color, making for more stylish, idiomatic performances. Attacks are strong and alert, played as surges rather than sharp “hits.”

The Inextinguishable, for once, sounds more like an actual symphony than a loosely structured sequence of episodes. In the alertly addressed first movement, the plaintive woodwind chorale is clearly the official second theme; a rousing tutti, not an actual recap, caps the development, and the joyous outpourings subside into the simple, folklike Poco allegretto. The Poco adagio‘s anguished opening threnody sets off the calmer passages. Luisi and the players nail the tricky metrical scansions of the finale’s theme, maintaining its graceful curve even as the music becomes turbulent.

Not everyone will appreciate the conductor’s restraint in the Fifth. The repetitive violin motif brings an anxious undercurrent to the straightforward theme. The famous, obsessive snare drum solo re-surges, as it should, to disrupt the warm, full-throated Adagio, but Luisi still gives the long musical line priority. The Presto fugue, building into a thudding, ominous peak, becomes the great juggernaut here. The basically triumphant conclusion sounds not entirely convinced. Once again, Luisi has the metrical irregularities well in hand.

Save in the Inextinguishable‘s opaque final climaxes, the engineering is impressive in the old Decca analog way (a compliment). Mild bass emphasis adds richness; soli are spotlit, notably the rich-toned bassoon. The brass choir is “deep” and brilliant, without harsh edges.—Stephen Francis Vasta

Mozart: The Prussian Quartets

Chiaroscuro Quartet

BIS-2558 (Hybrid SACD, reviewed in its native format as 24/96 WAV). 2022. Andrew Keener, prod.; Oscar Torres, eng.

Performance *****

Sonics ****½

Grounded in the music of the Western European masters, from Haydn to Mendelssohn, the 17-year-old Chiaroscuro Quartet now turns its period instruments to Mozart’s Prussian Quartets. Composed, presumably, with thoughts of a reward from King Friedrich Wilhelm II, the cellist king of Prussia, the quartets find Mozart at his fecund peak. The same good humor and sublime melodies heard in his contemporaneous opera, Cosi fan tutte, pour forth in a rich abundance of variations.

From the start of String Quartet No.21 in D major, the quartets abound in loveliness, the playing sprightly and alive. The musicians, including Alina Ibragimova on first violin, delight in showcasing their instruments’ colors and timbres as Mozart passes melody lines back and forth with a twinkle in his eye. In the second movement, with its brief allusion to Mozart’s adorable song “Das Veilchen” (The Violet), the Chiaroscuros play so softly that it’s a wonder they manage to maintain tonal color and bloom, and with such apparent ease. The closing movement is a joy.

It gets better. The opening of String Quartet No.22 in B flat major is remarkably hushed. Instrumental balance remains ideal at all volume levels. Mozart sounds as if he’s having the time of his life discovering one variation followed by other. Don’t miss the little chirping figures as you approach the four-minute mark in the third, zippy Minuet movement.

The final quartet, No.23 in F major, is the essence of mellifluousness. Colors are delicious as ideas pass from instrument to instrument. Listen to the beauty of Claire Thirion’s cello as the instruments whisper to each other in the Andante. It’s the aural equivalent of the best videos you’ve ever seen of sweet fuzzy animals playing together in blissful innocence. Heavenly, simply heavenly.—Jason Victor Serinus

Mahler: Symphony 5

Park Avenue Chamber Symphony, David Bernard, cond.

Recursive Classics RC5956731 (CD). 2022. Jennifer Nulsen, prod.; Isaiah Abolin, Thom Beemer, Lawrence Manchester, engs.

Performance ***½

Sonics *****

I questioned whether a “chamber symphony” could do justice to this score. But, according to the booklet photo, the Park Avenue Chamber Symphony is a full-sized orchestra, and it produces the heft and mass needed to fill out Mahler’s grand sonorities.

Working within a dry acoustic, the engineers serve up a natural, ungimmicked frame. The opening trumpet fanfare comes up with impressive, round depth, as does the Scherzo‘s obbligato horn. Woodwind and horn soli are precisely placed on the stage. Focused bass lines ground it firmly.

David Bernard brings out plenty of the score’s character. The opening dotted rhythms are oppressive in their weighty deliberation; the strings’ somber march, while more transparent, remains weighted, and the second theme all but grieves. The Scherzo‘s second group, slightly selfconscious, is affectionately laid-back. The Adagietto, once it settles, flows in a single purposeful arc; even the big downward swoop is kept within bounds. The Finale is best, vigorous and gracious by turns, the strings bold and confident in the “scraping” fugues. Conversely, the arrival of “sunlight” in the second movement almost passes unnoticed, and the Scherzo‘s tricky passages don’t quite stay coordinated.

The players approach the score’s demands with a certain doggedness. The second movement’s turbulent opening remains earthbound; so does the Scherzo after a nice, buoyant start. Elsewhere, they want to push forward, and the conductor pays insufficient attention to layering the textures: Uniformly thick, up-front sonorities dilute the climaxes’ impact.

This performance would have brought me to my feet in the hall, but it faces much high-octane competition on record. Still, it’s worth considering for audiophiles because of the superior sound.—Stephen Francis Vasta

Julia Bullock: Walking in the Dark

Nonesuch 695267 (auditioned as 24/192 WAV). 2022. Matthew Bennett and Dave Rowell, prods., Dave Rowell, eng.

Performance *****

Sonics *****

Walking in the Dark stopped me in my tracks. First, there was the arresting beauty of Julia Bullock’s voice: dark and soulful at bottom, solid at the very top, a conveyer of commitment and belief. Then there’s the subject: Samuel Barber’s great Knoxville, Summer of 1915, with the UK’s venerable Philharmonia Orchestra, surrounded by Bullock and Christian Reif, her pianist-conductor husband, in six songs addressing elements central to life during the pandemic.

The opening song is an arrangement of Oscar Brown Jr.’s “Brown Baby,” which Nina Simone recorded live at The Village Gate in 1961 with an inimitable shake of vibrato at the end of key phrases. Bullock starts with “When out of men’s hearts, hate is hurled,” which Simone sang at the end, singing with a wide-open heart.

First recorded the year before Rosa Parks refused to sit in the back of the bus, Connie Converse’s “One by One” arrives with sweet, fragile, heartfelt highs. Reif’s pianism is spare, sophisticated, and ideally paced.

At the abrupt beginning of John Adams’s “Memorial de Tlatelolco” from El Niño, fury and outrage descend on listeners like a hammer strike on a hot anvil. “City Called Heaven”—a traditional Black Spiritual of the enslaved—precedes a far deeper performance of Billy Taylor and Dick Dallas’s “I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free” than Nina Simone recorded on Silk & Soul in 1967. Then comes one of the finest performances I’ve ever heard of Knoxville, Summer of 1915.

If you thought Eva Cassidy said it all in their recordings of “Who Knows Where the Time Goes?” you need to hear Bullock’s take. Bob Ludwig’s mastering and Nonesuch’s unsquashed dynamics make you wish the great dramatic sopranos of the 20th century—Flagstad, Farrell, and Nilsson—had been blessed with such excellent engineering.—Jason Victor Serinus

The jazz piano trio has accurately been called “the minimum complete jazz orchestra.” It is an instrumental format of infinite possibility. The range of what is achievable with a piano trio runs from the ethereal to the tumultuous, from reductive single-note Zen to vast complexity. John Escreet’s trio with Eric Revis and Damion Reid leans strongly toward the tumultuous and the complex. It also attains something rare: an identity all its own.

From the opening track on Seismic Shift, “Study No. 1,” Escreet makes you realize anew that the piano is a percussion instrument. He gets a different sound from the piano (beautifully captured on this recording). He makes it crack and resound. The extreme independence of his two hands defines space in irregular shapes. His dissonance clangs. His angles are severe.

Escreet has made nine albums under his own name but never a piano trio recording until now. In its extraordinary energy, power, and daring, Seismic Shift is a breakout. While its overall impact comes from its aggression (forcefully supported by Revis and Reid), it is not one-dimensional. Escreet has the chops to execute the wildest impulses of his imagination. Very few current jazz improvisers have as many original ideas per minute. With Escreet, those ideas come in deluges; they pile on top of one another. On an improvised piece like “Outward and Upward,” clusters are spilled everywhere and overlay in arcane harmony. On compositions like “RD” and the title track, crashing chords become washes of extravagant lyricism. Anything might happen next. Tempos shift with a suddenness that does indeed feel seismic.

The only cover is so cool it makes you wish there were more. Stanley Cowell’s “Equipoise” is a mysterious song. Escreet lets his left hand dwell on the mystery while his right hand roams free.—Thomas Conrad

Amina Figarova: Joy

Figarova, piano; Bart Platteau, flutes; Alex Pope Norris, trumpet, flugelhorn; Wayne Escoffery, tenor and soprano saxophones; Yasushi Nakamura, bass; Rudy Royston, Brian Richburg, drums; two others.

AmFi BACD016 (CD, available as high-resolution download). 2022. Figarova, prod.; Misha Kachkachishivili, Andy Taub, engs.

Performance ****

Sonics ****

Amina Figarova grew up in Baku, Azerbaijan, where she received a conservatory education in classical piano. In 1990, she attended Rotterdam Conservatorium in the Netherlands, where she met her husband-to-be, Bart Platteau, and began playing jazz. Her 2005 album September Suite suggested that she was among the most gifted jazz composers of her generation. Over 16 albums, that promise has been fulfilled.

Figarova and Platteau moved to the United States in 2010. Their bands now include both strong Europeans and prominent Americans. The sound at the leading edge of every Figarova ensemble is Platteau’s acute, bright flute. With time, Figarova’s compositions have become more layered and complex. Joy is a move in a different direction, toward simplicity. It has a single purpose: to create an island of light in the world’s current darkness. The 10 songs are connected by the purity of their lyricism and the sincerity of their aspiration. “Suddenly Stars Are Falling from the Sky” and “Muse” are crystalline melodies, objective correlatives for gladness. “Only Peace Liberates” and “Morning Dew” are also pristine and rapt.

But while Joy is a work in which Figarova bares her heart, it never sounds fragile or sentimental. Platteau, Wayne Escoffery, Alex Pope Norris, and Figarova herself are clearly inspired by these new songs. Even when they play quietly, they burn with fervor. Anyone new to Figarova should start with September Suite, because it is one of the great jazz responses to the events of 9/11. Joy should follow soon. It is exactly what Figarova intended: a life-affirming antidote to the toxins of our troubled times.—Thomas Conrad

Ivo Perelman/Matthew Shipp: Fruition

Perelman, tenor saxophone; Shipp, piano

ESP-Disk ESP5070 (auditioned in WAV, available as CD). 2022. Steve Holtje, prod.; Jim Clouse, eng.

Performance ****

Sonics ****

The far left-of-center players of jazz are often extraordinarily prolific. Ivo Perelman and Matthew Shipp have just released their 18th album as a duo. Perelman’s discography is 100 titles long. Shipp’s oeuvre, as both leader and sideman, is also vast.

Perhaps the avant-garde crowd is so productive because their art is one of extravagant outpouring, not economy and focus. If they were painters, they would be more like Jackson Pollock than Andrew Wyeth.

In certain other respects, Perelman and Shipp are atypical free jazz players, on this album at least. They are relatively approachable. They do not raise hell and chaos. Perelman’s tenor saxophone sound is rarely a rasp or a scream. Their tunes are not 45-minute onslaughts but specific, four- to seven-minute investigations.

What makes Fruition coherent is how the two musicians listen to each other. Their collaborative creative process is stimulus/response. One player postulates a snatch of melody, a harmonic cluster, a suggestion of a groove, or even just a splash of color. The other echoes or amplifies the idea. As exchanges proceed, the idea expands and evolves. Sometimes Shipp even fills in lush chords all around Perelman, not afraid of overt, if arcane, lyricism.

Fruition has the best of both worlds: the in-the-moment electricity of entirely improvised music and the fulfillment of structure coalescing out of apparent randomness. It also has qualities not often associated with avant-garde jazz, like nuance, space, and dynamic contrast.

If the descriptions above make you think that Fruition is not a deeply challenging listening experience, think again. Its creativity is in a constant state of flux. It would make terrible background music. If you don’t pay close attention, some of the best ideas of Perelman and Shipp will blow right by you.—Thomas Conrad

David Bowie: Divine Symmetry (An Alternative Journey Through Hunky Dory)

Parlophone (4 CD Box Set + Blu-ray). 2022. Various prods., engs.

Performance *****

Sonics ****

The David Bowie estate seems to raid more vaults than John Dillinger ever managed to. But then, if the quarry results in quality releases, why not?

Divine Symmetry certainly is a quality release. It’s not just the title, which is great (although it’s not the first time the “Quicksand” lyric has been used; there was also an unofficial release). Included in the box, alongside a lush book of essays and pics, is a Blu-ray of the 2015 remaster of Hunky Dory, the original album. The big draw here, though, are the previously unreleased songs, rarities, and 2021 remixes. A BBC recording from legendary DJ John Peel takes up one side; it includes a wonderful romp through Chuck Berry’s “Almost Grown.” (Bowie at the Beeb contained some of the same session.)

The demos on the first CD will probably be of greatest interest to Bowiephiles, perhaps a bit too in the weeds for everyone else. It is interesting to hear how classics such as “Life on Mars?” were tidied up for the official release. Often the changes (including of the song itself) are not major; Bowie tended to go into the studio with songs pretty much fully formed. There are also rarer songs. Occasionally, there’s a reason for that: His rendition of Biff Rose’s “Buzz the Fuzz” is nowhere near the standard of his take of another of Rose’s, “Fill Your Heart.”

Happily, there are plenty of gems. “Right on Mother,” about Bowie’s relationship with his mom (who’d have guessed), had been considered as a single, but it got lost in the oncoming Ziggy juggernaut. All by itself it makes the set worthwhile. Also in the chest of goodies: “Tired of My Life” is pretty much unknown except that several lines were used years later in “It’s No Game.”

Divine Symmetry is worth investing in. There’s much to treasure here.—Phil Brett

Björk: Fossora

One Little Independent Records tplp1485 (LP; also available as CD, download, streaming). 2022. Björk, prod.; Bergur Thorisson, Jake Miller, others, engs.

Performance ****

Sonics ****

Oversharing has become Björk’s mission. On Fossora (from the Latin word for digger, burrower), another very personal journey is writ large for all to hear and ponder.

Here, the Icelandic creative force mourns the passing of her mother then moves on to ruminations about being a mother to her own daughter.

Never one to mince, she sets the tone in the ardent, near-dance-track opener, “Atopos”: “If we don’t grow outwards towards love/We’ll implode inwards towards destruction.” In “Sorrowful Soil,” a direct tribute to her late mother Hildur, a renowned environmentalist and also a nihilist, she speaks of an “emotional textile” and how in “a woman’s lifetime she gets 400 eggs/but only 2 or 3 nests.” In the brooding, groaning “Victimhood,” the narrative gets even more personal: “Rejection, it left a void that is never satisfied/sunk into victimhood/felt the world owed me love.”

While her words are very intimate, and she’s incredibly brave—rather than narcissistic—for proffering them, it’s the angular, avant music here, intricately recorded, that makes Fossora worth the listen. “Atopos” features a jolting, near-dance beat that she and Indonesian group Gabber Modus Operandi construct, and inside of which six clarinets and bass clarinets, arranged by Björk, flutter and feather. On “Sorrowful Soil,” a baroque-styled choir accompanies. Twelve flutes, again arranged by Björk, form diverse whirlwinds of sound in “Allow.” Opening with a gong, “Ancestress” is backed by a mini orchestra conducted by Ragheidur Ingunn Johannsdottir.

At times these hugely creative, otherworldly creations become mere settings for her exhortations and play like vocals in very unconventional, cutting-edge musical theater. It’s a strange musical universe of cinematic melodrama, not for everyone surely, but utterly original.—Robert Baird

Emily Scott Robinson: Built on Bones

Oh Boy Records (16-bit/44.1kHz streaming on Qobuz). 2022. Brandy Zdan, prod.; Teddy Morgan, eng.

Performance ****½

Sonics ****

Emily Scott Robinson wants to counteract the trope of ugly, warty-nosed witches as a metaphor for intelligent, powerful women. And because Robinson has an arrestingly beautiful voice and a gift for poetry, her new EP, Built on Bones, is not at all the heavy-handed sermon this description might conjure up.

Originally conceived as a theatrical piece, these six songs were envisioned as being sung by the three witches in Shakespeare’s Macbeth. Joining Robinson, the songwriter, as the other two witches are Alisa Amador and Lizzy Ross (aka Violet Bell); their silken, eerie voices match well with Robinson’s and contribute to the message that these sorceresses are, in fact, good.

“Built on Bones” opens the EP with creepy pedal steel sucked back in time by acoustic-guitar fingerpicking, layered against it in a lilting, ancient rhythm. The string arrangements by Kristin Weber favor low, earthy pitches.

It would have been unthinkable not to use the title “Double Double.” Co-written with Colin Sullivan, who originally commissioned this music, Robinson’s spooky rock song is the least interesting of the cycle. The other Sullivan collaboration, “Men and Moons,” also lacks the magical draw of the other tracks. “Sleep No More” brings back the fairyland feel with its a cappella three-part harmony, the witches preparing mad Lady Macbeth for the afterlife.

The song cycle follows the highlights of Shakespeare’s play from the witches’ point of view. Blossoming with mountain harmony, “Old Gods” imagines the love between Macbeth and his wife. It is sung first in major and then later in minor, after Lady Macbeth’s death. The minor version is the record’s highlight; the voices intertwine like moonlit gossamer, accompanied with bowed bass, piano, and Eamon McLaughlin’s wistful fiddle line. There is nothing ugly about these witches.—Anne E. Johnson

When I discovered Blondie’s breakthrough album, Parallel Lines, those lines filled my teenage mind with jealous fantasies. Whoever the object of Deborah Harry’s desire was—I knew it was probably Chris Stein, her bandmate and romantic partner—was too lucky to walk the earth. Possibly, Stein wrote the lines for her, and she willingly sung them to him. In a band that contained many songwriting partnerships, the song, “Pretty Baby,” was co-written by Stein and Harry.

I preferred to imagine that Harry was singing to herself. In front of the lens, she glowed like the sun: Golden hair, high cheekbones, a smile that could slay—a smile, indeed, that suggested she might kill you out of boredom. Boys and girls fell for her like an avalanche.

Harry’s beauty and up-from-the-gutter glamour contributed to the band’s success, no doubt. Certainly, her beauty and glamour eclipsed one of the hottest, tightest bands to come out of CBGB. With her platinum-dyed hair, she personified the band so much that in 1979, the year after Parallel Lines came out, they launched a pin campaign (a currency of punk fandom) that declared “Blondie is a Group.”

I’d like to think that even back then, my ears were mostly clear of teenage hormones—I bought Parallel Lines a few years after its release—yet, ironically, Harry’s looks and glamour led me to underestimate the band. I wrote them off with the same easy hand that relegated the girl groups Blondie emulated—those Shadow Morton and Phil Spector productions—as too cute to rank high as rock’n’roll musicians. There’s plenty of good looks and glamour in the world, but a great band is something more.

Among the problems posed by idol worship is the fact that idols are just people—inspired, gifted, talented, hardworking people to be sure, but still just people. To hear Blondie now, at a distance, is to hear the achievement of six people (plus producers and engineers) committed to achieving greatness. That’s not something that happens every day.

Released late in 2022, an 8-CD boxed set (Blondie Against the Odds 1974–1982) collects the band’s original run of six albums, through the glory years and fall from superstardom, combining them with rarities, demos, and early recordings, affording me the opportunity to indulge again and reassess, hopefully with wizened ears, the group that was Blondie. Blondie Against the Odds is also available in a 3-CD set (with early recordings, outtakes, and rarities only) or in sets of 10 and four LPs.

It’s fascinating to hear some of these songs develop, including “Heart of Glass” from Parallel Lines, their first US #1 hit, a song they’d been kicking around since 1974. Back then, they called it “Disco Song”; by 1975 it had become “Once I Had a Love.” It’s the same song, but it lacks that steady, rhythmic pulse and polish that would characterize the hit single.

Bright, tasteful remastering abets the experiment. The albums’ tight, claustrophobic mix is more akin to those of British contemporaries Elvis Costello and the Attractions and XTC than to the openness and expansiveness typical of albums made by fellow New York bands Talking Heads and Television. Blondie, though, wasn’t about wide-open spaces. Blondie’s vocals, two guitars, bass, and keyboards piled atop one another like an East Village kitchen with a bathtub. Behind it all is the wonder that is Clem Burke.

That’s the main lesson I learned from this Blondie deep dive: the central importance of the band’s drummer. Burke is the only member of the sextet who never got a songwriting credit, yet his propulsive, tasty fills contributed more to the band’s distinctive sound than anything except Harry’s voice. Listen to how he leads them into 1979’s “Dreaming,” one of their biggest hits: It’s not a 4-count but 1-2-3-4-5-6; a tight, fast roll on 7 and 8 and we’re flying out of the station.

To the degree that Blondie was a punk band, it wasn’t because of the songwriting, the melodies, or the instrumentation. It’s Burke’s drumming, which makes even the ballads seem like an onslaught. But it’s never out of place. Listen to “Dreaming” and imagine it with a drummer who thought it should sound dreamy; it becomes something very different. Harry may have been dreaming, but Burke was wide awake.

It was “Dreaming” that kicked off Blondie’s fourth album. After the surprise success of Parallel Lines and “Heart of Glass,” Eat to the Beat, which was released in 1979, was a surprisingly hard-driving rock album. It was also the first album ever released on LaserDisc, with videos shot for each song. The band stumbled into the ’80s, though, with another disco hit (“Atomic”) from their first lackluster album, Autoamerican. After 1982’s The Hunter, they called it quits, though not forever.

The Hunter turns out to be the final surprise in Against the Odds. I owned it back then, but when I looked over the track listing recently, I didn’t recognize a single song title.

It’s a weird album, overambitious and overproduced, vaguely conceptual—and kind of wonderful. They’re older, willing (and able) to sing about the Beatles and the war in Cambodia and to cover Smokey Robinson. The album even hints at the lounge singing Harry would pursue years later with the Jazz Passengers.

Idol worship has its place, I suppose, as does nostalgia. But the thrill of rediscovery, and to right a decades-old wrong on the mental checklist, is a joy.

Bassist Ron Carter, world-renowned musician and most-recorded jazz bassist of all time, said in an interview for Stereophile‘s Musicians as Audiophiles that he sees himself not just as a bassist but also as a scientist, forever striving to understand and perfect the sound of his recordings. Chile-born saxophonist Melissa Aldana, a stunningly expressive jazz musician, shows similar dedication to her art, studiously investigating the century-long history of the genre.

Aldana started saxophone lessons at age 6 under the tutelage of her father, Marcos Aldana. Her technique and musicality progressed steadily, influenced by a pantheon of great alto and tenor saxophonists, Sonny Rollins in particular. She went on to study at Boston’s Berklee College of Music, graduating in 2009. Just four years later, she won the prestigious Thelonious Monk international jazz saxophone competition—the first female musician and the first South American to win that competition. (Marcos Aldana was a semifinalist, in 1991.) The prize: a $25,000 scholarship to the Monk Institute and a recording contract with Concord Jazz. In 2020, she joined the New England Conservatory’s Jazz Studies faculty.

Videos posted to her Instagram feed (melissaaldanasax) hint at the breadth of her mastery: She is heard maneuvering through slow, calm passages and blurringly fast sequences, from high-pitched birdcalls to deep, low rumbles. One also hears an ease of flow, precision, and clarity, and an occasional, unexpected softness.

When I heard her in concert at The Jazz Gallery in New York City, presenting material from her Blue Note release 12 Stars, Aldana and her ensemble—guitarist Mike Moreno, acoustic bassist Pablo Menares, pianist Sullivan Fortner, and drummer Kush Abadey—performed as a single organism, soaring through the graceful, often complex material with frenetic ease.

12 Stars, her sixth album as leader and her first on the Blue Note label, was released in 2022. It was recorded and mixed by James Farber at Samurai Hotel Studio in Astoria, Queens, and Sear Sound in New York City, and mastered by Mark Wilder. Vinyl was cut by Ian Sefchick at Elysian Masters in Los Angeles.

On 12 Stars, Aldana and her bandmates roam the precipitous slopes of a dreamscape. “Falling” conjures bliss weighed by a sense of foreboding as soothing cascades of golden iridescence from guitarist Lage Lund and pianist Fortner are punctuated by Aldana’s dark squalls and turbulent rhythms. A bolero rhythm underpins the regal, adventurous “Intuition.” Quavering, spectral “Emilia” sounds surreal and spooky. Inspired by Toni Morrison’s first novel, “The Bluest Eye” projects disquietude, like a descent from a vertiginous peak. Effortlessly pulsing, “The Fool” has the mood of a Michael Brecker composition from his Impulse! period, Aldana dancing and swerving. “Los Ojos de Chile” swells and surges, Aldana’s quartet passing around and juggling. The title track closes the album with a tremble, a fading dream slowly giving way to consciousness. The whole album, even the more frenetic passages, is permeated by a sense of calm control.

Aldana’s previous album, Visions, was a tribute to the life and work of Mexican painter Frida Kahlo. Other albums in her discography include Free Fall (Inner Circle), Second Cycle (Inner Circle), Melissa Aldana & Crash Trio (Concord Jazz), and Back Home (Wommusic). Aldana has also performed as part of the all-female jazz supergroup Artemis, with Anat Cohen, Ingrid Jensen, Allison Miller, Renee Rosnes, Cécile McLorin Salvant, and Noriko Ueda; their debut was released on Blue Note in September 2020. Aldana also played on Cécile McClorin Salvant’s Grammy Award–winning album, The Window. (Salvant designed the cover art for both Visions and 12 Stars.)

My interview with Aldana began with a discussion of tarot, a practice she’s been studying. The interview was edited for concision and style.

Ken Micallef: How was today’s tarot reading?

Melissa Aldana: It was quite interesting. A new thing for me. It felt very natural even though it was unique. My tarot reader mostly described a healing process. I come from an interesting family background. I’m healing from a lot of things. It’s a deep process, and it’s very related to music. He reminded me that I should nurture myself as a person too, not just as a musician. It was beautiful.

Micallef: Your music has a mystical and spiritual quality, the way you and your band glide and twist: It’s like a single organism.

Aldana: I don’t have lyrics to tell you what I’m thinking or feeling, and that is something that I always struggle with. Because I’m feeling a lot of things, and I want to express them in a way that connects with people, through harmony that moves people and tells a story. When you hear Caetano Veloso, you don’t understand the lyrics, but the movement of the harmony tells you the story. My compositions, in an abstract way, are related to that. The way I think about solos is the same. I’m thinking about the bigger picture. I’m not thinking moment to moment. It’s like an out-of-body experience, being able to see the bigger picture of how we all tell stories together.

Micallef: Your recent album, 12 Stars, sounds as if it were composed as a suite, each tune fusing into the next. Your playing is very fluid, complementing that.

Aldana: I wrote the album during the pandemic. I went through a huge crisis. It was a deep, personal crisis. It taught me a lot about myself, about my musical process as well. It helped me to identify the things that I connect through music but that I never applied to my personal life. I’m happy, actually. I’m very happy that it happened because I was trying to make sense out of my own process. I went on a spiritual path, which I’ve always felt but never began. I studied tarot to learn something different.

It’s not necessarily about card divination but about the personal process. I saw the relationship of that with my musical process. I’m a perfectionist. The fluidity you hear comes from hours of practice, every single day. I’ve spent years transcribing one musician, trying to figure out how the person sounds. It’s not the notes; it’s how the musician sounds. It’s important for me to understand where I’m coming from as a saxophone player, meaning that I understand the history from Coleman Hawkins to Mark Turner. And it’s been really hard to let it go because it makes me feel in a safe place.

When I’m playing, I have to be in the moment, and I have to be okay with sometimes falling apart. I have to allow myself to go through that process in order to find who I am. During the pandemic, I basically collapsed. Everything fell down, and I came through the process with much more acceptance of who I am and understanding of my place and the things I need to work on. Music helped me grow through that process, as did the meanings and tenets of the tarot.

Micallef: You went through a marital breakup.

Aldana: Yes, but more than that. It was an accumulation of things, about dealing with my boundaries about who I am. We connect with people through our struggles. We all come from the same place at the end of the day but with different stories. My struggle began at childhood, and it showed up in my relationship with friends and relatives. It was so tough that I had to focus on myself and go inside. I became a hermit, which is also one of the cards of the tarot. It talks about this being a part of the process of life, when you go inside to achieve certain things. I found comfort in the tarot. It has to do with trusting and maturing and getting to know yourself.

Micallef: Over your last few albums, your saxophone sound has become softer but more dynamic. Your sound is more contained and quieter, but it is more powerful.

Aldana: That comes from practicing consistency of tone. Every day, two hours of long tones. Even when I practice the fundamentals, I practice in a way that makes me aware of my plot on the instrument. Aesthetics mean a lot to me. To me, sound is aesthetic. Now that I have my own apartment, I really care about aesthetics and the way things are put together. The details. In the same way, it’s not just about good sound; it’s also about the detail behind the sound. I work a lot on detail. I have a WhisperRoom sound booth where I practice, so nobody can hear me. That way I hear the sound is coming from me, but not from outside. I usually wear headphones, and I can tell every frequency of the sound and I can completely relate in the way whether I like the sound or not. I spend all these hours just trying to figure out one little thing, another little thing, another little thing, and after two years, they add up. That’s the idea of the albums.