Eligo Jazz – 15/04/2025 at 20:00

Melissa Aldana began playing the saxophone when she was six, under the influence and tuition of her father Marcos Aldana, also a professional saxophonist.

In 2013, at the age of 24, she became the first female musician, the first South American, and the youngest person to win the Thelonious Monk International Jazz Saxophone Competition. In reporting her victory, The Washington Post described Aldana as representing “a new sense of possibility and direction in jazz.”

Aldana has also received the Chilean Altazor National Arts Award and the Martin E. Segal Award from Lincoln Center. She has performed in concerts alongside artists such as Peter Bernstein, Kevin Hays, Christian McBride, and Jeff “Tain” Watts, and at numerous festivals including the Copenhagen Jazz Festival, Twin Cities Jazz Festival, Umbria Jazz, Vienna Jazz Festival, and Providencia Jazz Festival in Chile. She also performed with Jimmy Heath at the 2014 NEA Jazz Masters Award Ceremony and was invited to Jazz at Lincoln Center by Wynton Marsalis.

In 2017, she formed the Melissa Aldana Quartet, featuring Aldana on tenor saxophone, Sam Harris on piano (or Lage Lund on guitar), Pablo Menares on bass, and Kush Abadey on drums.

In 2024 she released Echoes Of The Inner Prophet, the follow-up to the acclaimed saxophonist’s GRAMMY-nominated Blue Note debut 12 Stars. The new album is a striking 8-song set of original compositions. 

A fascinating paradox defines Echoes Of The Inner Prophet, a musical voyage to explore the depth of the spiritual journey. As Aldana explains, her new album reflects her “personal journey, with an especially introspective point of view. The inner prophet is my own self, now older, who has the knowledge and the intuition and the truth about what my path should be.”