Melissa Aldana has brought music from her latest Blue Note album, Filin, to NPR Music’s Tiny Desk Concert as part of the annual Hispanic Heritage Month series “El Tiny.” The Chilean saxophonist is joined by Cuban pianist Gonzalo Rubalcaba, bassist Pablo Menares and drummer Kush Abadey for a four-song performance featuring material from Filin and her 2024 album Echoes Of The Inner Prophet.
The program includes “Dime Si Eres Tú,” written by Cuban composer César Portillo de la Luz, and Frank Domínguez’s “Imágenes,” alongside Hermeto Pascoal’s “Little Church.” Aldana also performs her own composition “Unconscious Whispers,” which appeared on Echoes Of The Inner Prophet. The selections reflect the repertoire behind Filin, a ballads project centered on songs associated with Cuba’s Filin tradition.
Aldana had wanted to make a ballads album throughout her recording career, with John Coltrane’s 1963 LP Ballads serving as an important reference point. She saw a slower-tempo project as an opportunity to concentrate more closely on tone and expression. For the album, she approached Rubalcaba, a pianist she had long hoped to work with across a full project. He suggested exploring Filin, a Cuban style that developed between the late 1940s and early 1960s and brought together elements of traditional trova, bolero and jazz. Rubalcaba described the movement as one that placed greater emphasis on lyrical intimacy while creating space for instrumental and vocal virtuosity.
For Aldana, the repertoire also offered a connection to the jazz standards she had studied while giving her songs whose lyrics she could engage with directly in Spanish. “They felt like the ballads that I love from the Great American Songbook,” she said, “but because the lyrics are in Spanish, I was able to connect to these songs in a way that I never thought I could.” The project also continued her focus on sound as an expressive tool, an approach she has developed through studying and transcribing saxophonists including Sonny Rollins, Wayne Shorter, John Coltrane, and more.
Watch Melissa Aldana’s Tiny Desk set here.
