Acclaimed as two of the leading voices on the modern creative music scene, Grammy-winning bassist Linda May Han Oh and Grammy-nominated saxophonist Melissa Aldana are both artists and musical explorers who fully understand the debts owed to the trailblazers and groundbreakers of the past. But thus far in their careers, both have honored those forebears by pushing determinedly forward, carving new and distinctive tributaries from the river of sound that they’ve inherited.
Beneath Lifted Skies is something different. The brilliant new duo album, out August 21, 2026, marks the first time that either Oh or Aldana have recorded a project almost entirely dedicated to jazz standards.
“In part, this album is a tribute to those who have paved the way for us,” Oh explains. “We’ve had people lift the skies for us in many ways, and we’re privileged and lucky to be playing this music thanks to those artists who’ve inspired us.”
On the surface, Beneath Lifted Skies may seem a startlingly traditional outing for this pair of indefatigable innovators. While both are revered as composers with singular and intriguing voices, in this setting they’ve chosen to explore some of the most celebrated composers in jazz history – a list of icons that includes Charlie Parker, Bud Powell, Thelonious Monk, Charles Mingus (whose “Duke Ellington’s Sound of Love” provides an opportunity to honor two legends at once), Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, John Coltrane, Sam Rivers, Gigi Gryce and Billie Holiday.
But the album is far from an exercise in nostalgia, or in unearthing the past. The key is in the title: these are songs that have raised the boundaries of the music, not only laying the groundwork for contemporary artists like Oh and Aldana but challenging them to soar higher and reach further.
“It wasn’t about paying tribute in a traditional sense,” Aldana adds. “but more about entering those worlds and seeing what we could discover inside them together.”
To that end, the project also includes three riveting free improvisations that reveal their participants’ compositional imagination, taking vivid shape in the moment. The repertoire is rounded out by three solo outings by Oh, including a shadowy version of Hancock’s “The Sorcerer” featuring the booming tones of a newly acquired bass with a low C extension, formerly belonging to an orchestral bassist in Oh’s hometown of Perth; a heartrending meditation on “God Bless the Child” that becomes the bassist’s latest protest against the inhumanities suffered by children in this country and across the globe; and a crystalline original composition, “Winter.”
While she is in relentless demand as one of creative music’s most prolific and inventive bassists, Oh’s releases to date have charted her development as an ever more ambitious and visionary composer, each speaking to the present moment in a profoundly personal way: contending with the challenges of the creative life on 2017’s Walk Against Wind; fathoming the depths of beauty in the kaleidoscopic blend of modern jazz greats and string players with Aventurine; pondering the fragility of time in the face of nascent motherhood and global pandemics on The Glass Hours; screaming into the void with a stark grace and hushed urgency on last year’s Strange Heavens.
Aldana has been hailed as one of the most distinctive saxophonists of her generation since bursting onto the scene with her 2010 debut, Free Fall, but she has focused less on dazzling listeners with her undoubted virtuosity than on constructing new frameworks to contextualize her sinuous lines and nuanced ferocity. The self-titled 2014 debut of her Crash Trio is a blistering contribution to the chordless trio legacy passed down from one of her chief influences, Sonny Rollins, turned down to a mesmerizing simmer on her follow-up, Back Home. Visions investigates the work and life of painter Frida Kahlo, while 12 Stars finds guidance in the tarot deck. Her most recent release, Filin, is a different kind of ballads record, reimagining midcentury Cuban song with the brilliant pianist Gonzalo Rubalcaba.
The singularity of Beneath Lifted Skies stems in part from the conjunction of two artists who have traveled very different but parallel paths to this point. They have converged from opposite ends of the earth: Oh born in Malaysia and raised in Western Australia, Aldana the Chilean-born daughter of a noted saxophonist. They’ve crossed paths in a variety of contexts on the New York jazz scene, playing on occasion in each other’s projects and in bands led by others, but never clocking significant hours on the bandstand together. The album was crafted in a sweet spot – not the comfortable, relaxed reunion of old friends, but also not the tense first meeting of guarded strangers.
Reflecting on the album title, Aldana says, “Beneath Lifted Skies feels like a space of openness and possibility, but also grounding. There’s something about being underneath something vast—like the sky—that makes you aware of both your freedom and your vulnerability.”
“This album is a nod to those who’ve come before us,” Oh concludes. “But at the same time we wanted it to feel quite open and expansive. This music exists in a vast, infinite space that we can explore with this information that we’ve been given.”
While listening to this captivating album, take a moment to hazard a glance out the window and up into the boundless blue above. You may find the skies seem to have been lifted just a little bit higher.
Release Date: August 21, 2026
Melissa Aldana appears courtesy of Blue Note Records
Track listing:
- Anthropology (Charlie Parker + Dizzy Gillespie)
- Hallucinations (Bud Powell)
- Improvisation: Infinite (Linda May Han Oh + Melissa Aldana)
- Duke Ellington’s Sound of Love (Charles Mingus)
- Cyclic Episode (Sam Rivers)
- The Sorcerer (Herbie Hancock)
- Dance Cadaverous (Wayne Shorter)
- 26-2 (John Coltrane)
- I’ll be Seeing You (Sammy Fain + Irving Kahal)
- Social Call (Gigi Gryce + John Hendricks)
- Improvisation: Resolve (Linda May Han Oh + Melissa Aldana)
- Introspection (Thelonious Monk)
- God Bless the Child (Billie Holiday + Arthur Herzog)
- Improvisation: Shoulder to Shoulder (Linda May Han Oh + Melissa Aldana)
- Winter (Linda May Han Oh)
By: Bass Magazine