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Kousha Navidar: This is All Of It from WNYC. I'm Kousha Navidar. Melissa Aldana is a Grammy-nominated tenor saxophonist, and she's just released her latest album called Echoes Of The Inner Prophet. Let's listen to one of the album's compositions. This is The Solitary Seeker.

[MUSIC - Melissa Aldana: The Solitary Seeker]

Kousha Navidar: You know what I really hear in the music and the album's title itself, it's Aldana and her quintet using their instruments to search within themselves for spiritual inspiration. On that note, you won't be surprised to learn that the late great musician Wayne Shorter was a big influence on this album. Aldana was born and raised in Chile to a musical family and started playing sax when she was six. She came to the US to study at the Berklee College of Music and later won the prestigious Thelonious Monk International Jazz Saxophone Competition.

When she's not traveling around the world, Aldana is based in New York, and we're lucky to have her in the studio now for a listening party. Her album is called Echoes Of The Inner Prophet, and it's out now. Hi, Melissa, and welcome back to WNYC.

Melissa Aldana: Hi, thank you so much for having me.

Kousha Navidar: Absolutely. Congrats on the new album.

Melissa Aldana: Thank you so much.

Kousha Navidar: Let's talk about the title, Echoes Of The Inner Prophet. Who is the inner prophet in this case?

Melissa Aldana: The inner prophet, I will say, is my higher self, my soul, I don't know, however, you want to call it. Every album for me has to do with the process I'm dealing with in my personal life. Now in my 35, I'm having more of a sense of self and understanding that a lot of those echoes I hear come from within me, like the master or the person, the higher self, and knows what you need to do, or who you are. To me, that is very much related to music. Those cycles, aside from my personal life, to me are all my influences, like Wayne, Sonny Rollins, all the things I love makes who am I.

Kousha Navidar: Yes, I just turned 36 a couple months ago, and that sense of being able to look back and just now starting to be able to have enough of a road behind me to see who the influences are, and to feel that higher self is the term that you use. I don't know if I'm that smart, [chuckles] but that sense of just being able to reflect is wild. Do you think that's just a product of age? Or do you think that's something that you found intentionally through action of your own?

Melissa Aldana: I think this age and also intentional action. I don't know, I see the personal process and musical process, they go together. For example, when it comes to playing music, there's a whole process where you're just imitating in order to understand who you are, in order to understand, "Okay it's no such thing as Sonny has a better sound than Coltrane", it's just different. My soul, my higher self, this is what I love.

Then there's a whole process of denial. Is like, "I don't want to sound like Sonny, I don't want to try to get out of it and move forward," and then you realize that you are all of the things together, and the same on the personal life, like the good and the bad thing, just story with your family, your mom, your dad, all of that. It makes a person who am I these days.

Kousha Navidar: It sounds so similar to the way that so many people actually learn jazz and how to improvise, which is transcribe the greats and listen to the greats, and then eventually, you can build on them, which is what you're talking about with higher self, right?

Melissa Aldana: Absolutely. Yes, absolutely.

Kousha Navidar: I'm curious, when you think about the composition and recording process of this album compared to albums in your past, what was something you did differently? Or how did you push your boundaries in this one?

Melissa Aldana: To me, it's more than pushing the boundaries for every album. I'm pushing the boundaries every day. As soon as I finished recording an album, I already practiced every day, trying to figure out like, "Why am I here. How can I have a better sound? How can I go deeper? How can I keep transcribing?" I'm super huge into Freddie Hubbard lately. How can I get better? I workshop my way of grinding. All of those experiences comes together, and then there's the album. It's like two years of the beginning, of practicing, of just trying to figure out how can I be better every day.

Kousha Navidar: It just organically comes from every day?

Melissa Aldana: I think that and it's something that I tell all my students, a big part of the process is to trust the process, just like you do this because I love it. I know that if I work a little bit every day, and I think about it, even if it's not perfect, in the longer run, is where it's going to lead me.

Kousha Navidar: It's such an interesting juxtaposition to the idea of finding a higher self, too, because you're really just diving into the work and not thinking about the higher goal there, which is a wild-like inner self working towards something higher.

Melissa Aldana: Yes.

Kousha Navidar: Let's listen to some of the title track now, Echoes Of The Inner Prophet. It's the first track, it's spacey and dreamlike. Before we listen, can you tell us, how does this opening song set the tone for the rest of the album?

Melissa Aldana: Yes. To me, these songs speaks to how I was feeling when I grow the music and the process that I'm dealing with. When I think about the music, the images that come is like, you're in the middle of the ocean, there's nothing around, and then you can hear the lower notes on the bottom, which to me will represent a whale or the weight of thoughts or whatever is happening. That is a place where I grow the music and that is a place where I practice, and I'm trying to grow as an artist.

Kousha Navidar: Let's listen to it. Here's Echoes Of The Inner Prophet.

[MUSIC- Melissa Aldana: Echoes Of The Inner Prophet]

Kousha Navidar: That was Echoes Of The Inner Prophet. It's the starting title of the album itself, which is also called Echoes Of The Inner Prophet. We're talking to saxophonist Melissa Aldana, and she's here for a listening party for the album. Listening to that, talking about that idea of mastering an instrument, I'm wondering, once you master an instrument, what's next to becoming better? How do you actually improve once you master it?

Melissa Aldana: I think I practice every day. It's just the way that I always will do. I see when you practice every day, and when you think about what you're doing, you start questioning things, and you can always get better by challenging or keeping yourself interested in what you do. The way I practice sound, I have a way of practicing sound, but it's a way that I'm being forced to see the things I haven't liked about my playing and work on them, which may have to do with like, is this the way that I'm hearing the upper side of the register, because when I think about sound, now there's a lot of technical things that you can do, but sound to me is a frequency where a human being vibrates.

There is a technical part and then is the mystical part. Why when you hear Wayne playing one note, it change you. It heals you. It just takes you to idea, so why is that thing? In my practicing, it's not that I'm trying to find something specific because I don't know what it is, but I'm trying to really think about and feel what I'm doing, and like, does this feels good to me. Then challenging yourself. I've been transcribing Freddie Hubbard for these past years, and I have learned so much about saxophone from here, like changing my positions, like how to play altissimos language rhythm. I think there's always something to learn.

Kousha Navidar: You mentioned Wayne Shorter, and you've said how this album specifically is influenced by him. He's the legendary musician who sadly died last year at the age of 89. Folks, if you're listening and you're familiar with Wayne Shorter's music, you know that he was more than a musician. He was almost a philosopher. What lessons did he teach you and how did they show up in this album?

Melissa Aldana: I think that, well, sound, and this is a lesson from everyone that I love. I feel like from hearing all his music, the use of sound to tell you an emotional story. As a saxophone player, I can't tell lyrics but sound dynamics. When I hear Wayne, I think about somebody in painting. How do you paint your own story? Even though I transcribe a lot of Wayne back in the day, to me it's more about this idea of just let it go, be vulnerable. It's good to be vulnerable. That's how you find something.

Kousha Navidar: Are those two ideas of you don't have lyrics, so how do you show emotion, and then also thinking of Wayne's painting? Are those two things connected at all with how you approach telling a story when you're playing the sax?

Melissa Aldana: Oh, yes. Absolutely. I think about sound. When I think about Wayne, I think about a human voice. When I'm playing, I want to try to reach that. I don't know what is that because you can't touch. It's a mystical thing to me like you can practice it. You can question it, and you can try to get closer to it by being vulnerable, by trying different things.

Kousha Navidar: It makes me think of the documentary that came out recently.

Melissa Aldana: Oh, yes. It's beautiful.

Kousha Navidar: Zero Gravity. Last August, we did a segment on this show about that documentary. Zero Gravity was about Wayne Shorter, his life, and his influence.

Melissa Aldana: Beautiful.

Kousha Navidar: Something I remember about the documentary was seeing inside of Wayne's office and you just saw one shelf full of action figures and it was like he always was grounded by the sense of wonder as a kid when he loved action figures and comic book characters. How do you maintain that sense of wonder for yourself in music?

Melissa Aldana: To me, inspiration is something that you have to work for. I keep myself inspired by being curious, about a lot of different things. When it comes to music, just listening to a lot of things, trying to be open-minded to see if the music is good, and to me keeping that curiosity, which has to do with the practicing too. I love Freddie Hubbard so much. When I was a kid, I guess my fiction figures was transcribing, and I transcribed for hours with my dad.

I try to keep that inner child inspiration. When I'm transcribing Freddie, it's so challenging on the saxophone, but it reminds me of that feeling of like, I really love this and I really want to try to figure it out. The curiosity of, how can you play these altissimos on the saxophone when it's impossible to play a solo like that, how can I work on that.

Kousha Navidar: Let's listen to another composition from the album now, A Story. Here is A Story from Melissa Aldana.

[MUSIC- Melissa Aldana: A Story]

Kousha Navidar: We're here with Melissa Aldana who's a tenor saxophonist, and she's here for a listening party for her new album Echoes Of The Inner Prophet. Melissa, on this album, you're playing with your quintet. Can you introduce us to the musicians we're hearing?

Melissa Aldana: Yes. Lage Lund on the guitar, who is the person that I could grow the music with, and he did the post-production and also producing the album with me. Then we have Pablo Menares, who I know since I was 15, Chilean bass player, one of my favorite musicians ever. Kush Abadey on the drums. We went to Berklee together, and Fabian Almazan, who has been one of my favorite piano players for a long time.

Kousha Navidar: We think about often hearing jazz as trios or quartets. This is a quintet. What can you achieve with that composition of instruments that you might not be able to otherwise?

Melissa Aldana: It's very different. I played trio for many years, and the main reason was because I wanted to be exposed to really have to deal with the saxophone, which is really hard. It's either you play or not. As time went by, I always hear harmony. I always hear the orchestration in everything that I'm playing. It felt natural to expand the band and having Lage in the band has more to do with having him than an actual guitar player. You know what I mean?

It's a voice. He's somebody that I can connect musically speaking. Then, I love Fabian's playing. It's about adding textures to me, different textures that can help to express the music better. With this music that we wrote, there's a lot of harmonically speaking, hard things to express when you play with a smaller band.

Kousha Navidar: You're based in New York now, but you were raised and born in Santiago, Chile, and it's where you got your start in music. How often do you have the opportunity to go home?

Melissa Aldana: I usually go once a year.

Kousha Navidar: How would you describe that city's jazz scene?

Melissa Aldana: It is definitely growing a lot, but I didn't grow up seeing that many concerts or seeing young musicians of my age. That wasn't a thing growing up. I know that right now the scene has expanded a lot, and there's a lot of jazz festivals. There's more opportunities. There are master classes. It's not New York, and it's South America, and it's a great scene. I always say, it's not a place like New York.

Kousha Navidar: Is there anyone from the jazz scene there that you especially admire or maybe influenced you when you were growing up?

Melissa Aldana: Yes. Absolutely. Claudia Acuña, she was the first Chilean that came to the US. She's a beautiful singer and recorded so many beautiful albums. She's a huge role model for a lot of Chileans that left the country after her.

Kousha Navidar: We were talking a lot about story here and how we can express story through sax, through a quintet. When folks are listening to your album what is the story that you hope they get from listening to you?

Melissa Aldana: The story of who am I, the things that I like, the things that I don't like. I think that to me is like that's where I think about sound. Sometimes you hear something, you can explain why it touches you in a certain way, but you can hear the message behind it. I'm always being, but I'm getting deeper and deeper into being very thoughtful about how can I be a human voice, how can I express a story.

Kousha Navidar: We've been talking to Melissa Aldana, the tenor saxophonist. We are looking at the Echoes Of The Inner Prophet and the saxophone Wayne Shorter, the influences, growing up, being able to look forward while looking back. Melissa, thank you so much for joining us. It's been a real pleasure.

Melissa Aldana: Thank you for having me.

Kousha Navidar: What we'd love to do to go out is to hear one more song of yours from this album, Echoes Of The Inner Prophet. This is A Purpose.

[MUSIC- Melissa Aldana: A Purpose]

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