Melissa Aldana

Grammy-nominated saxophonist and composer Melissa Aldana has garnered international recognition for her visionary work as a bandleader, as well as her deeply meditative interpretation of language and vocabulary. She was recently signed with Blue Note Records, releasing her debut album 12 Stars with the historic label in March 2022. “Melissa Aldana is one of the foremost musician/composers of her generation,” says Blue Note President Don Was.

Aldana’s celebrated 2019 album Visions (Motéma) earned the saxophonist her first-ever Grammy nomination for Best Improvised Jazz Solo, an acknowledgement of her impressive tenor solo on her composition “Elsewhere.” In naming Visions among the best albums of 2019 for NPR Music, critic Nate Chinen wrote that Aldana “has the elusive ability to balance technical achievement against a rich emotional palette.”

Aldana was born in Santiago, Chile and grew up in a musical family. Both her father and grandfather were saxophonists and she took up the instrument at age six under her father Marcos’ tutelage. She moved to the U.S. to attend the Berklee College of Music, and in 2010, released her first album Free Fall on Greg Osby’s Inner Circle label, followed by Second Cycle in 2012. In 2013, at 24, she became the first female instrumentalist and the first South American musician to win the Thelonious Monk International Jazz Saxophone Competition, in which her father had been a semi-finalist in 1991. After her win, she released her third album Melissa Aldana & Crash Trio (Concord). 

When

Location

Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts, 445 S. Magnolia Ave., Orlando   View Map

28.5375795,-81.3768888

445 S. Magnolia Ave. , Orlando 

Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts

445 S. Magnolia Ave. , Orlando 

Melissa Aldana