Blue Note Records proudly announces the signing of acclaimed Grammy-nominated saxophonist and composer Melissa Aldana, who has joined the prestigious roster of the legendary jazz label.
Aldana will be heading into the studio later this month to record her Blue Note debut, which will be released in early 2022. She will also be performing this Sunday, May 16 at the JCAL Jazz Festival at the Jamaica Center for Arts and Learning in Queens.
“It feels unreal that I was signed to Blue Note,” says Aldana. “There’s so much Blue Note music I’ve checked out through the years that influenced me and gave me a sense of direction. It helped me figure out how I wanted to sound and what speaks to me, musically. I feel extremely honored to be a part of the label and a part of the legacy. It means so much to me.”
“Melissa Aldana is one of the foremost musician/composers of her generation,” says Blue Note President Don Was. “Her vibrant artistic vision, mastery of her instrument and her deep groove make Ms. Aldana a perfect exponent of the Blue Note ethos. We’re thrilled to be part of her musical life.”
Aldana was one of the founding members of Artemis, the all-star collective that released their debut album Artemis on Blue Note this past Fall. 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.”
Kahlo was also the subject of Aldana’s celebrated 2019 album Visions (Motéma), which 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.”
Melissa 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). 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.