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Duke Jazz Ensemble with guest artist Melissa Aldana, saxophone

"[Aldana's] resplendent Blue Note debut, 12 Stars... marks her debut on arguably the king of jazz labels: Blue Note Records. Therein, highlights like 'Falling,' 'The Bluest Eye' and 'Los Ojos de Chile' thread her experiences through her mastery of her musical language." - GRAMMY.com

Join the Duke Jazz Ensemble, John V. Brown, director, and Evan Roberson, associate director, as they welcome Melissa Aldana to the Baldwin stage.

$10 general admission/$5 senior citizens/free for students. Tickets: https://tickets.duke.edu.

GRAMMY-nominated saxophonist and composer Melissa Aldana has garnered international recognition for her visionary work as a band leader, as well as her deeply meditative interpretation of language and vocabulary. She was recently signed with Blue Note Records and releases her debut album with the historic label titled "12 Stars" in March 2022.

Aldana was one of the founding members of ARTEMIS, the all-star collective that released their debut album on Blue Note in 2021. The album featured Aldana's simmering composition "Frida," 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."

Born in Santiago, Chile, Aldana attended the Berklee College of Music. In 2013, she became the first female
instrumentalist and the first South American musician to win the Thelonious Monk International Jazz Saxophone Competition. An in-demand clinician and educator, the New England Conservatory's Jazz Studies Department appointed her to their jazz faculty beginning in the Fall of 2021.

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