Linda May Han Oh & Melissa Aldana, Beneath Lifted Skies Review

by Jeff Becker

Linda May Han Oh and Melissa Aldana do not need to make two musicians sound like four on Beneath Lifted Skies. That would miss the point. The strength of this bass-and-tenor setting is not that it recreates the density of a conventional jazz quartet, but that it exposes how much harmonic, rhythmic, and formal information these two musicians already carry within their individual lines. With piano and drums removed, familiar functions remain remarkably intact while the details of musical conversation come sharply into focus.

The repertoire makes that idea especially revealing. Oh and Aldana draw from a lineage that includes Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Charles Mingus, Wayne Shorter, and other central voices in modern jazz, while placing those compositions alongside freely improvised duo pieces. The contrast could have become a division between tradition and experimentation. Instead, Beneath Lifted Skies suggests something more interesting: the freedom of the duo is already present inside the composed material, and the same habits of listening continue when predetermined form and harmony disappear.

“Anthropology” immediately moves as the melody is played together, with both musicians articulating the rapid bebop language cleanly so that the absence of a conventional rhythm section does not weaken the structure. Oh’s tone is focused and resonant, her intonation secure, and her agility allows her to match Aldana’s movement without making the bass feel hurried. When Aldana begins improvising, Oh settles into a walking line that retains the recognizable role of a bassist inside a quartet. The openness comes from what is no longer surrounding them.

Rhythm changes remain clearly expressed through the movement of the lines and their emphasis on defining chord tones. During Oh’s solo, she continues maintaining time through single-note movement and strategically placed double-stops. When the two begin exchanging phrases, the performance becomes more explicitly conversational, but nothing about the harmonic foundation feels uncertain. Their roles have not fundamentally changed. What has changed is how clearly the listener can hear the decisions taking place between them.

That distinction becomes even more pronounced on Charles Mingus’ “Duke Ellington’s Sound of Love.” Aldana enters with a low-register slur that gradually blooms into the phrase, her breath-rich tenor sound giving the melody warmth before any technical complexity becomes important. Her playing is lyrical and patient, shaped less by display than by the movement and destination of each phrase.

Oh establishes a defined swing two-feel beneath her, using fills and double-stops to reinforce both harmony and form. Those double-stops are not decorative additions. They function as punctuation, marking significant points in the structure while briefly expanding the harmonic weight of a single bass instrument.

Her solo reveals the same musical thinking in greater detail. Oh keeps what can feel like two lines alive simultaneously: a lower-register melodic foundation and a higher counterline, with full double-stops used to deepen important arrivals. The striking part is that this contrapuntal instinct does not suddenly appear when she becomes the featured soloist. It is already present in her accompaniment.

Aldana follows a similar principle from the melodic side. Even when she leaves the stated tune behind, the shape of the composition remains present in her phrasing. Climbing lines gather tension and then resolve toward moments of harmonic clarity. Both players remain aligned with the movement of the form while allowing the time to breathe around their individual inflections.

The finer mechanics of the duo can be heard on Wayne Shorter’s “Dance Cadaverous.” Its opening preserves the identity of the composition, with Oh and Aldana moving through the familiar material in roles that would not seem unusual inside a larger ensemble. The real interest is found in what happens around those roles.

During Aldana’s solo, a phrase begins to move upward in register and Oh’s line responds by moving with it. Later Aldana introduces a rhythmic idea that accents a secondary melodic shape. Oh hears the figure, incorporates it, and sends it back into the performance from beneath her.

These are small events, but they are the substance of the recording. The duo interacts because musical information does not simply move in one direction from soloist to accompanist. A phrase becomes material for the other musician. A rhythmic shape is heard, altered, and returned. Register itself becomes part of the conversation. The performance develops through accumulated acts of listening.

That makes “Resolve,” one of the album’s freely improvised pieces, especially revealing. With no established composition defining the conversation, Oh begins by introducing a modal color. Aldana enters within that atmosphere, then shifts toward another harmonic shade. Oh follows. A major third redirects the color again.

The process continues without sounding like a search for material. Aldana introduces an ascending diminished figure, increasing the harmonic tension, and Oh answers by raising both the activity and tension of her bass line. Each gesture proposes a direction that the other musician can accept, modify, or redirect.

On the standards and modern jazz compositions, harmony and form give the musicians a shared subject. On “Resolve,” the subject is created as they play. Yet the conversational process remains the same: propose, hear, respond, reshape. That continuity gives Beneath Lifted Skies its coherence.

Beneath Lifted Skies’s relationship with jazz tradition is therefore neither conservative nor oppositional. Oh and Aldana do not demonstrate their modernity by escaping the language they inherited. They demonstrate it through the freedom with which they can move inside that language. Bebop harmony remains clear on “Anthropology.” Mingus’ melodic richness remains central on “Duke Ellington’s Sound of Love.” Shorter’s harmonic and structural character still defines “Dance Cadaverous.” None of those identities prevents the musicians from making immediate decisions of their own. The stripped instrumentation simply makes those decisions easier to hear.

Aldana’s contribution is especially compelling because of the expressive identity of her sound. Her tenor can be warm, breathy, and sensual in the lower register, yet her phrasing retains enough harmonic precision to make the direction of the music clear. She shapes lines with destination in mind, whether moving through bebop vocabulary or responding freely to Oh.

Oh is equally central to the album’s architecture. Her strong tone and intonation provide obvious grounding, but her real contribution goes beyond keeping time and defining harmony. Walking lines, two-feel, counterpoint, register, double-stops, and responsive rhythmic figures all become ways of participating in the conversation. Even when fulfilling recognizable bass functions, she remains actively involved in shaping what happens next. That is ultimately what makes the duo sound complete.

Neither musician attempts to compensate theatrically for the absence of piano or drums. They simply understand harmony, pulse, form, and jazz vocabulary with the foundations internalized, both players gain room to listen. And listening is the real organizing principle of Beneath Lifted Skies.

The compositions give Oh and Aldana places to begin, but the life of Beneath Lifted Skies exists in what happens after the beginning: a rising phrase that changes the bass line beneath it, a rhythmic idea passed between instruments, a double-stop that sharpens a harmonic arrival, or a modal color quietly redirected by the next voice. The skies may be lifted, but the music never loses its ground.