Apr 8, 2025 1:23 PM
Blue Note Jazz Festival New York Posts 2025 Lineup
Blue Note Entertainment Group has unveiled the lineup for the 14th annual Blue Note Jazz Festival New York, featuring…
Melissa Aldana says that Visions connects her work “to the legacy of Latina artists who have come before me.”
(Photo: Anna Yatskevich)Drawn from a 2018 Jazz Gallery commission inspired by the life of artist Frida Kahlo, saxophonist and bandleader Melissa Aldana is set to release Visions on May 24 through the Motéma label.
Aldana, winner of the 2013 Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz International Saxophone Competition, recorded the album with an ensemble that includes vibraphonist Joel Ross. And it’s the connection Aldana and Ross forge on the title track, premiering below, that helps make the recording such a monumental statement. While encouraging her bandmates to take advantage of each composition’s space for improvisation, it’s Aldana and Ross’ ferocious exploration of the song’s theme that displays the deft musicality Visions showcases over 12 cuts.
“This movement is the musical representation of my own explorations of self-identity that every woman and every artist faces, and includes feelings of pain, mistrust, exhilaration and relief,” the bandleader said about the opening portion of the album, which includes that initial 2018 commission. “Experimenting both harmonically and rhythmically with moments of frantic movement interspersed with order and structure is one of the ways I conjure the messiness, struggles and heartbreaking contradictions present in these visions of identity and self-worth.”
As an added wrinkle of interest, the album’s cover art is by vocalist Cécile McLorin Salvant, who currently is on the road with Aldana as part of the Monterey Jazz Festival on Tour.
For more information about Visions, visit the Motéma website. DB
The Blue Note Jazz Festival New York kicks off May 27 with a James Moody 100th Birthday Celebration at Sony Hall.
Apr 8, 2025 1:23 PM
Blue Note Entertainment Group has unveiled the lineup for the 14th annual Blue Note Jazz Festival New York, featuring…
“I’m certainly influenced by Geri Allen,” said Iverson, during a live Blindfold Test at the 31st Umbria Jazz Winter festival.
Apr 15, 2025 11:44 AM
Between last Christmas and New Year’s Eve, Ethan Iverson performed as part of the 31st Umbria Jazz Winter festival in…
“At the end of the day, once you’ve run out of differences, we’re left with similarities,” Collier says. “Cultural differences are mitigated through 12 notes.”
Apr 15, 2025 11:55 AM
DownBeat has a long association with the Midwest Clinic International Band and Orchestra Conference, the premiere…
“It kind of slows down, but it’s still kind of productive in a way, because you have something that you can be inspired by,” Andy Bey said on a 2019 episode of NPR Jazz Night in America, when he was 80. “The music is always inspiring.”
Apr 29, 2025 11:53 AM
Singer Andy Bey, who illuminated the jazz scene for five decades with a four-octave range that encompassed a bellowing…
Davis was a two-time Grammy winner for liner notes.
Apr 22, 2025 11:50 AM
Francis Davis, an august jazz and cultural critic who won both awards and esteem in print, film and radio, died April…
