(2012) Sello: Inner Circle Music
Si no estuvimos atentos al lanzamiento
de Second Cycle, ahora lo compensamos...
“Second Cycle,” the second record from this young Chilean tenor saxophonist on Greg Osby’s label, Inner Circle, sounds like a moment of synthesis and challenge, when a jazz musician wants to squeeze the music’s history and prove herself on deeper levels. Melissa Aldana is in her mid-20s and already advanced; “Free Fall,” two years ago, showed her basic readiness with the tradition. But on “Second Cycle” she’s in a small group without a piano or any chordal instrument, playing hard over fairly soft dynamics. This suits her. With the trumpeter Gordon Au, the bassist Joseph Lepore and the drummer Ross Pederson she self-edits and takes her time, getting into the weight and texture of the notes, the pleasure of the sounds. For extended periods she’s riding intricate bass-and-drum rhythms by herself. For a long introduction to the title track she plays completely unaccompanied. She unspools frenetic phrases and open, flowing ones. Her version of “I’ll Be Seeing You” shows that she’s absorbed the ballad-playing tenor tradition of the 1940s — from Don Byas and Ben Webster — and in other places she seems to link, within a few phrases, the Coltrane of the early ’60s and the Mark Turner of now."
The New York Times diciembre 21 2012
