Melissa Aldana is a Chilean tenor saxophone player, who performs both as a soloist and with her band Melissa Aldana & Crash Trio.
labels: Concord Jazz, Motéma Music, Blue Note
genres: jazz
awards: Premio Altazor al mejor álbum de música alternativa/jazz, Martin E. Segal Award
plays: tenor saxophone
member of: Artemis
Facts from Wikidata and Discogs, free to use.
Aldana was born in Santiago, Chile. She began playing the saxophone when she was six, under the influence and tuition of her father Marcos Aldana, also a professional saxophonist. Aldana began with alto, influenced by artists such as Charlie Parker, Cannonball Adderley, and Michael Brecker. However, upon first hearing the music of Sonny Rollins, she switched to tenor; the first tenor saxophone she used was a Selmer Mark VI that had belonged to her grandfather.
Aldana recorded her first album, Free Fall, released on Greg Osby's Inner Circle Music imprint, in 2010. Her live performances in this period included performances at the Blue Note Jazz Club and the Monterey Jazz Festival, and her second album, Second Cycle, was released in 2012. In 2013, aged 24, she was the first female musician, the first South American, and the youngest person to win the Thelonious Monk International Jazz Saxophone Competition, in which her father had been a semi-finalist in 1991. The competition's prize was a $25,000 scholarship and a recording contract with Concord Jazz. Reporting her win, The Washington Post described Aldana as representing "a new sense of possibility and direction in jazz".