Melissa Aldana
““...cultured, emotionally weighted, purposeful.””
“.. one of the more exciting young tenor saxophonists today””
“... savvy subversions to jazz’s modern mainstream”
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A fascinating paradox defines Echoes Of The Inner Prophet, Melissa Aldana’s 2024 follow-up to her acclaimed Blue Note Records debut as a leader, 2022’s 12 Stars. As the GRAMMY-nominated saxophonist and composer 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.
“So it’s this idea of connecting with that inner prophet,” she continues, “which reveals things about myself, including those things I don’t like.”
At the same time, this deeply intimate, searching project is a celebration of collaboration and community. It documents the evolution of her quintet — Lage Lund, guitar and effects; Fabian Almazan, piano and effects; Pablo Menares, bass; Kush Abadey, drums — capturing the collective insight they’ve garnered after extensive touring and travel, and arguing for their place among the most incisive working groups in jazz today.
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. Aldana began on alto, influenced by artists such as Charlie Parker and Cannonball Adderley, but switched to tenor upon first hearing the music of Sonny Rollins. She performed in Santiago jazz clubs in her early teens and was invited by pianist Danilo Pérez to play at the Panama Jazz Festival in 2005.
Aldana moved to the U.S. to attend the Berklee College of Music, and the year after graduating she released her first album Free Fall on Greg Osby’s Inner Circle label in 2010, 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 Jazz, 2014). Other releases followed-Back Home (Wommusic, 2016) and the Frida Kahlo-inspired album Visions (Motéma, 2019), which earned the saxophonist her first-ever GRAMMY nomination for Best Improvised Jazz Solo.
Aldana was one of the founding members of ARTEMIS, the all-star collective that released their debut album ARTEMIS on Blue Note in the Fall of 2020. The album featured Aldana’s simmering composition “Frida,” which was dedicated to Mexican painter Frida Kahlo, who inspired the musician through “her own process of finding self-identity through art.”
Aldana is also an in-demand clinician and educator, and the New England Conservatory’s Jazz Studies Department recently appointed her to their jazz faculty beginning in the Fall of 2021.
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