Jazz
Chilean saxophonist Melissa Aldana has recorded a Tiny Desk Concert for NPR with Cuban pianist Gonzalo Rubalcaba, bassist Pablo Menares and drummer Kush Abadey. The session is part of “El Tiny”, the series NPR runs each year for Hispanic Heritage Month.
There are four pieces: “Dime Si Eres Tú”, by César Portillo de la Luz; “Imágenes”, by Frank Domínguez; “Little Church”, by Hermeto Pascoal, and “Unconscious Whispers”, an Aldana composition from “Echoes of the Inner Prophet” (2024). The other three come from “Filin”, the ballads record she released on Blue Note on 13 February this year.
The repertoire for that album was Rubalcaba’s suggestion. Aldana had wanted to make a ballads record for years, with Coltrane’s 1963 “Ballads” as her reference, and the pianist pointed her towards filin, the Cuban tradition of romantic song that ran from the late forties to the early sixties. “Filin elevated lyrics to a level of greater poetic and colloquial intimacy”, Rubalcaba says. Aldana explains it through the language: “They felt like the ballads that I love from the Great American Songbook, but because the lyrics are in Spanish, I was able to connect to these songs in a way that I never thought I could.”
Text by Aina Torrents