International Salsa Magazine

Melissa Aldana Will Headline The Wellington Jazz Festival

The Most Acclaimed Latin Saxophonist On The International Jazz Scene

Melissa Aldana started playing the alto saxophone at the age of 6
Melissa Aldana started playing the alto saxophone at the age of 6

Melissa Aldana is a Chilean saxophonist and composer nominated for the Grammy Awards (2020) for her skills with this wind instrument, she has six studio albums, and her fame has spread to all Jazz circuits around the world.

Aldana with his quartet will headline the Wellington Jazz Festival 2022 to present to the fans the debut album with the company Blue Note Records titled 12 Stars, and you cannot miss the opportunity to experience this exceptional live performance with flowing harmonic notes seasoned with feeling in the Wellington Opera House (111 – 113 Manners Street, Wellington, New Zealand) on Sunday, October 23rd from 7PM to 8:30PM, and the ticket price is $69.

The Wellington Jazz Festival is an entry point into the Jazz music calendar for fans and the curious. This event will offer more than 100 magical concerts in bars, restaurants, and live music venues in the capital. This year the splendid festival will take place in mid-spring in Aotearoa (New Zealand’s Maori name), featuring some of the best international Grammy Award-winning and nominated artists, as well as renowned talent from this Oceanian country and the world.

On the other hand, Melissa Aldana was the first South American woman and instrumentalist to win the Thelonious Monk International Jazz Contest (Washington -USA) in 2013. This artist born in Santiago de Chile in 1988 is a graduate of the prestigious Berklee College of Music with a full music scholarship in 2009, moreover, she also comes from a musical family where her father and paternal grandfather played this instrument.

The discography of this tenor saxophonist goes back 12 years when, at only 22 years old, she came out on the music market with her debut album Free Fall (2010). It is followed by Second Cycle in 2012, Melissa Aldana & Crash Trio (2014), and Back Home in 2016. Her fifth studio album was Visions (2019), an album that earned her first Grammy nomination for Best Solo by Improvised Jazz in recognition of her impressive tenor solo on her composition Elsewhere.

12 Stars was composed in Harlem (New York - USA) in 2020
12 Stars was composed in Harlem (New York – USA) in 2020

Most recently her record production is 12 Stars, an anecdotal album that she wrote during the Covid-19 pandemic and the product of the struggles she went through due to the breakup of a long relationship. “This is a very important album for me. I felt like I had a lot to say because of all the experiences I had during 2020. After the personal process that I went through, I feel more connected to myself and my imperfections… Embrace everything I hear, everything I touch, including mistakes, is more significant than perfection”. Aldana exposed in her biography

12 Stars was recorded under the Blue Note label and released on the music market on March 4th. “I feel super privileged, but I had a feeling that this had to happen at some point. I’ve been very consistent with my band and my projects for a long time. I am very motivated for what comes next”. Aldana expressed to an international digital medium.

Melissa will end her presentations in Europe this year with a tour during November that will take her to the capital of Spain on Friday, November 11th (Teatro Fernán Gómez) and on Saturday 12th, she will be in Badajoz (Teatro López De Ayala). While on Monday, November 14th, she will perform at the Zig Zag Jazz Club (Berlin-Germany), and on Wednesday, November 16th, she will have the same but this time at the Porgy & Bess in Vienna, Austria.

The Padova Jazz Club (Padua- Italy) will be handed over to Melissa Aldana on Friday, November 18th, and a day later she will do so at the Teatro Lauro Rossi in Macerata, Italy.

Adriana Saez
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