Melissa Aldana’s 2nd Blue Note album Echoes Of The Inner Prophet is a musical voyage to explore the depth of the spiritual journey. Co-produced by Aldana and Lage Lund, the album features the tenor saxophonist with Lund on guitar, Fabian Almazan on piano, Pablo Menares on bass, and Kush Abadey on drums.The 8-track set of original compositions includes 6 new pieces by Aldana that seek profound truths through introspection, intuition, and self-reflection including the opening title track which is dedicated to Wayne Shorter.

12 Stars, the sixth album from formidable tenor saxophonist Melissa Aldana, is her first for Blue Note. It’s also the first to document a fruitful collaboration with Norwegian-born guitarist Lage Lund, who produced 12 Stars and cowrote the entire album with Aldana. The music is deeply informed by the harmonies and textures of Lund’s guitar and “gizmos,” at times sonically reminiscent of his 2019 album, Terrible Animals. Aldana, however, is the virtuosic focal point of 12 Stars as she mixes it up with a band featuring Lund with mainstay bassist and fellow Chilean Pablo Menares, pianist Sullivan Fortner, and drummer Kush Abadey. (The cover art, like that of Visions, is by the acclaimed vocalist Cécile McLorin Salvant.) Complex unison parts, bristling tempos and transitions, rich tone colors, smoking solos, and an utterly bewitching ballad for a closing track—it’s work befitting one of the leading jazz artists of our time.

ARTEMIS is a jazz supergroup featuring pianist and musical director Renee Rosnes, clarinetist Anat Cohen, tenor saxophonist Melissa Aldana, trumpeter Ingrid Jensen, bassist Noriko Ueda, drummer Allison Miller, and vocalist Cécile McLorin Salvant who will release their debut album on Blue Note Records in 2020. Each renowned for her outstanding solo work, the band members form an unparalleled international line-up hailing from the US, Canada, France, Chile, Israel, and Japan. The musicians first assembled for a European festival tour in summer 2017, and eventually named themselves after the Greek goddess Artemis who was the daughter of Zeus and Leto, the twin sister of Apollo, the patron and protector of young girls, and the goddess of hunting, wild nature, and chastity. ARTEMIS has been featured in Vanity Fair and on NPR’s Jazz Night In America, who broadcast the band’s tremendous 2018 performance at the Newport Jazz Festival.