Alden Hellmuth grew up in Hartford, Connecticut, surrounded by the legacy of saxophonist Jackie McLean, and received her bachelor's degree from the Hartt School at the University of Hartford. She now lives and works in New York City as a saxophonist, composer, and improviser.
Hellmuth's 2024 debut album, Good Intentions, released on Fresh Sound Records, won the 2025 German Jazz Prize for Debut Album of the Year International and earned her the ASCAP Herb Alpert Young Jazz Composer Award. In 2025, she completed a master's degree at the Herbie Hancock Institute at UCLA, where she was mentored by artistic director Ambrose Akinmusire and Herbie Hancock himself. She has since received Chamber Music America's Performance Plus Grant and performed at venues and festivals including the Hollywood Bowl, the Blue Note Jazz Festival, and International Jazz Day events in Morocco and Abu Dhabi.
Her sophomore album, Tether, recently arrived on LEITER, the Berlin label co-founded by Nils Frahm. The eight-track record draws on the free-jazz double-bass ensembles of Ornette Coleman and Andrew Hill, built around bassists Logan Kane and Miller Wrenn, alongside drummer Justin Brown, with pianist Paul Cornish and trumpeter Yakiv Tsvietinskyi appearing as featured guests.
Lawrence Peryer recently hosted Alden Hellmuth on The Tonearm Podcast. The two spoke about Hellmuth’s Hartford roots, her mentorship under Ambrose Akinmusire and Herbie Hancock, and the writing and arranging choices behind Tether's two-bass lineup.
You can listen to the full conversation in the audio player below. The transcript has been edited for length, clarity, and flow.
Lawrence: Tell me about the Hartford area. The gravitational pull for me as a kid, especially, was New Haven, because I was much closer. I remember going to see some really interesting music at the Real Art Ways Festival over the years—I saw Sonny Sharrock and Marc Ribot. I'm curious about the music that was in the air for you as a young person, either specific to Hartford or just what you were pressing play on.
Alden: I grew up in Hartford, slash Rocky Hill, but I did all my schooling in Hartford, in the Learning Corridor, across from Trinity.
It's funny because, looking back, I feel like even in Middletown—something about the music scenes never crossed over. I think also it's just that the teachers I had in Hartford made it feel very insular. It was this little bubble of Jackie McLean students. There are a lot of students of Jackie McLean out in the world, but a significant number of them ended up teaching at places like Hartt and the Greater Hartford Academy of the Arts and Artist Collective, which is where I spent most of my time. It made sense to me as a young musician that I was listening to some later Jackie, early Jackie, everything Jackie McLean was connected to. When I moved to New York, especially, it felt like this door had just been ripped open. I was like, there's so much more.
It's interesting when you're in a community like that: it feels like there's one vision of what the music is supposed to look like, or what they believe it looks like. It doesn't leave a lot of room for exploring outside of the tradition they have there. Jackie is responsible for a massive community of musicians, and it's really beautiful, but at the same time, I felt like I missed a lot of opportunities, because there are these amazing scenes in Connecticut—at Wesleyan, Anthony Braxton, Tyshawn Sorey, who I think was there around the same time I was in college. Looking back, I wish I had branched out a bit more, but I also think the path I've taken means I could only be where I'm at because of the experiences I had.
And then I started to find my own way in twentieth- and twenty-first-century new music, and it really wasn't until I moved to New York that I felt like that door fully opened. I went way back and discovered that I had totally missed the Anthony Braxton connection that was just down the street from me.
Lawrence: When you talk about the Jackie McLean universe of people, the pedagogy, some of the attitudes, I hear all of the respect that you have there. I don't hear any of the light critique as a negative in any way. When you're in an environment like that, it provides an interesting role, because it gives you an "anti"—it gives you something to frame against, and that can be very positive when you're developing any kind of outlook, artistic or otherwise. Did that give you something to define against or push back against?
Alden: Oh, absolutely. When I moved to New York, I found something I really loved, and I ran toward it. I thought, "I'm never looking back; I want to run forward in this direction." Especially when I went to Europe and started working with an even wider range of contemporary artists, artists from a completely different lineage than what I had known my entire life up until then, I thought, I'm never looking back. But it's funny, because very quickly I realized how it's all connected in a circle.
Everything is always connected, especially in jazz and in music in general. It was a really beautiful wire-crossing moment in my brain, where I realized that my upbringing in this particular tradition connected me to the music in a very particular way—completely full circle, going back even to Charlie Parker and realizing that Charlie Parker is one of the freest, greatest improvisers of all time. Being able to connect those dots was really fulfilling, and it made me feel less "anti" about my upbringing in that community. And some of Jackie McLean's later albums are pretty out there.
Lawrence: I love the spirit of reconciliation, that realization of the cycle of the lineage and the deep connection between it all. Especially when you talk to more artists, you start to see that in what people listen to, what they came up through. I would almost think your experience is a bit unique, not typical, in terms of coming up through such a distinct silo, such an artist-rooted version of that. It's interesting.
Alden: Oh, absolutely. I totally resonate with that.
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Lawrence: The word Tether is fascinating to me because it implies this rootedness and connectedness, but it also limits—if you're tethered, there's an outer limit to how far you can go. I'm curious about that dichotomy. Is Tether holding things together for you, or is Tether holding things in place?
Alden: I actually think about it more as the band members being tethered to each other. They can move as a unit and move within—they're like a little galaxy. Within the galaxy, the planets shift and move, and then within the greater thing that is whatever we want to call space, the galaxy moves and shifts. It's this idea that even when you're in that outer realm of improvised music, where there may not be something to ground you, like a harmony or a melody—even in completely free improvised music, there's always a tether that runs between the instrumentalists, whether it's through having played together for a long time, coming up in the same way, or studying the same kind of music: a shared language, a shared understanding. I just love that idea, especially in jazz, because that's something we talk about so often—that it's a shared language that transcends cultures and languages.
It's just music. It really pulls people together in a way that lets you just say, "Do you want to play this song?" And then everybody can improvise and play over it. I think that's such a beautiful thing.
Lawrence: This is a little reductive, but I was hearing some of the music on Tether in a couple of different buckets. The first was around composition: some of the compositions are more defined, more structured, more notated, and then there's the part where it's free. Other pieces seem more improvised, more of the other kind of composition, however we want to call it. I'm curious about that experience for you as the composer and as the leader. The specificity of the first type of composition and the direction it gives the players, versus handing over many of the decisions as a composer—how do you think about that? How do you trust it?
Alden: That's exactly it, trust is so important. I write for whoever I'm playing with, and I think that defines my compositional process entirely: I fully trust the people I'm making music with. My favorite type of music is the kind where you have to listen and think: "Is this written, or is this being improvised? What's happening here? How did they move from this section to the next, come together, and then come apart?"
I said this the other day and realized it's kind of a beautiful analogy: you're taking all these threads from all these musicians, like different colors. You set the pattern and weave them together in the composition, and then what I love is to pull all the threads apart—you don't know whose thread is whose anymore. But to take that mess of threads and pull it back together, to pull this completely new woven structure out of the process, is so magical to me. That comes from being in a band for a long time.
You can do that completely improvisationally too—the 'second quintet' is a great example of this. Peter Evans's band is one of my favorite examples, too, where suddenly they're playing in unison, and you're like, "Whoa, how did we even get here?" It's this magical thing, and I think I'm going for that. I'm constantly trying to figure out how much information to give the musicians to achieve it, because you don't want to overwrite and you don't want to underwrite—you want to create a space where people feel like they can be themselves, and know that you, as a composer, trust them to be themselves. That's important to me, and much of my compositional process revolves around it.
And I think also, for this record, I was going in all directions compositionally, because I had just finished the program here in LA, the Herbie Hancock Institute. During those two years, we studied composition with Billy Childs, Ambrose Akinmusire, a wide range of voices, and Herbie himself. It was an incredible experience to hear all these voices and processes, so I had all of these ideas and thought, let's just try them all.
Lawrence: Could you tell me a little about some of those experiences at the institute? Was it revelatory, or was it building on what you already knew? How would you define that two-year experience?
Alden: It's hard to define. I think some of the greatest takeaways from that experience were just being in the same room with people I truly love and admire. Ambrose is such an incredible mentor, and our conversations meant so much to me, and still do. And being in the room with Herbie Hancock is a very special thing, too.
Just understanding that there is no ego in music for Herbie, and that that's the ultimate goal—he's more concerned with being a human. Music is just this channel of expression, and the simplification of that takes a sort of weight off your shoulders, because being a musician can be so challenging. To meet someone like Herbie, to play with someone like Herbie, where there's just this inherent lightness to existence and being, to music itself and music creation, is beautiful. Understanding that there's a ton of work and discipline required to be there and to be your best, but not feeling so burdened by it, not feeling such a heavy weight—understanding that everything you're doing is working toward this wonderful thing that words literally cannot express, because that's the magic of music.
Lawrence: It's interesting that at his age and life stage, he's choosing to spend time on pedagogy and mentoring, sharing back with people earlier in their journey. I wouldn't take that as a given.
Alden: Yeah, I feel so lucky. We had just had our first meeting with him, and we played "Dolphin Dance," I think. I was grilling him about my favorite records, like Speak Like a Child. It's funny, because anyone who's been around him knows that when you ask him a question, he'll say, "I don't know, it was great," and that's his response to "how was it recording with these incredible people?"
So we had just met him. He was playing some big concert, I think an LA jazz festival, in this giant theater. I had gotten in and was sitting in one of the front rows, and then all of a sudden, I was in the VIP up toward the front. Herbie gets up on the mic and starts talking to the audience a little bit, and then he looks down at me and goes, "Oh"—on the mic, in front of thousands of people—"hey." And I was like, me? He goes, "Oh, sorry, this is just my student Alden." It was just one of those moments where I thought, Herbie Hancock knows who I am, that's insane. I sank in my chair. This is so unbelievably surreal to me. Then he came back, and we did a bunch of tours together, and I got to know him more personally. He's just such a special, special person.
My favorite thing is that at every concert, he loves to shock people—he'll take his keytar and do a little jump, and everyone always cheers. I think that's so funny, because he's really in such great health. I feel like he plays into that, like, "You guys are going to love this."
Lawrence: When it comes to presenting your bandmates with the overwritten and underwritten pieces, is the band prescreened for people who can handle either? Or are there people who are more comfortable in one context or the other?
Alden: Ideally, yes, you need people who can do both. It's kind of a problem in modern jazz, in particular, that the music has been so influenced by so many genres, coming from so many directions. You have to play a lot of different styles in a lot of different bands; you have to understand the language, and it's really interesting to me how that has evolved, where it requires a lot now.
When I moved to LA, I very quickly found that Logan Kane is one of the most in-demand bass players in Los Angeles and can play everything on bass, while Miller Wrenn is an amazing improviser who creates the coolest sounds and has incredible compositional ideas, coming from a completely different direction than Logan. But again, to talk about that circle that exists in this music, it's all connected in a way, and I think that's the beautiful thing. I admired both of the bass players on this record very much, as friends and as musicians.
The whole project came from a bill that Miller had asked me to be a part of, that Logan was also on, and I thought how funny it would be if I had both of them and we did a double bass quartet—also knowing that they occupied two very different spaces sonically. It was just one of those moments where I thought, "That actually makes a lot of sense, let's do it." It's not even just the way that they play; it's also the timbre of their instruments—they're so different, and I think that's special. For what I envisioned for this project, I really cannot imagine making this record without Logan and Miller. It's just so about who they are.
(l-r) Justin Brown, Miller Wrenn, Logan Kane, Alden Hellmuth
Lawrence: I love talking with artists about the role of place in their music—that could be as broad as the city, the macro environment an artist is in, or specific recording studios and performance spaces. You've spoken about how some of this music was played in DIY or punk-adjacent places. What is the role of place for you, and how do you think the music comes out differently?
Alden: I really think our very first gig, the bill that Miller asked me to be a part of that inspired this whole project, defined what I envisioned for it. I also think the city of LA defined the direction, because our first gig was at this DIY space called Non Plus Ultra. It's a funky, fun, amazing place to play in downtown LA. As soon as I saw the space, I thought, "This project needs to go in this direction; I need to write for this space"—which is kind of backward, but again, this was my outlet at the time, when I was in grad school, so I was having a lot of fun with it. I think it's all alignment, everything coming together.
My walk from the music school to my grad housing was about thirty minutes, and I would spend that time listening to whatever I wanted, like checking out a new record. I spent a lot of time alone, thinking, listening, learning, developing ideas, and questioning things. At that moment in my life, I was revisiting Breakup Song by Deerhoof, which I remember hearing in high school, and my mind was blown because I love albums that are totally unexpected and surprising. That album hit all the marks—production, songwriting, everything was unexpected, and I just fell in love with it. I was revisiting that record at the time, and I was also listening to a lot of Japanese punk—I had recently discovered this band Otoboke Beaver, so I credit a lot of the sound to that era of my life. I was just having fun, writing these songs that at the time felt totally left of what I was doing and working on. But it's funny, because again, it's just full circle.
Lawrence: I don't like to make too much of binaries, but I hear a lot of polarity in some of the things we're talking about. One thing that strikes me is that some of these spaces, these types of music, are not as concerned with—or are even suspicious of—polish, tidiness, and order, in a way that's different from conservatory training, which might be looking for a certain type of precision, or at least proficiency. Different values, different aspirations in the music. How does that fit into all of this? It feels like it's in the air in what we're talking about.
Alden: I feel very grateful that, despite having gone to Hartt—and that whole conversation we had before about the community that existed in the tradition I was brought up in, especially the later Jackie McLean mentality—it did not hold value in perfectionism. I never really had that teacher who was like, you have to take the perfect solo.
Lawrence: That's great.
Alden: I was surrounded by people—Abraham Burton and Renee McLean, and then later Ambrose and Walter Smith—all these people who were pushing me to search. On my own, as a perfectionist, I found a way—when I came to UCLA, I started studying with a classical saxophonist to really get my stuff together on saxophone. It's this self-discipline that's met with this search. People reward the search, and I feel very lucky that I grew up and studied in places where the search was always the goal—that greater thing, like the Sonny Rollins on the bridge type of thing.
Lawrence: I love that. You couldn't have made that up. That's such a cool part of Rollins's story. Not even lore or legend, it's real—he did that. It's so crazy. I love it in every way.
Alden: The search is what drives music. That's the magic of it.
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