MELISSA ALDANA
Genres: Post Bop, 21st Century Modern • Chile

Melissa Aldana began playing saxophone at the tender age of 6. After watching pupils come in and out of her home in Santiago, Chile to take lessons from her father, Marcos Aldana – a renowned jazz saxophonist himself – the young Melissa would pester him to teach her as well. Her father began teaching her by showing her how to play two notes. From that moment, she was hooked and was finally given her first saxophone, an alto, and her father began teaching her how to play. Marcos Aldana’s teaching technique included a great deal of transcription. “When I first started learning, we were using cassettes to transcribe,” says Melissa. “My dad would choose a song that he really liked, so the first person I learned from was Charlie Parker. We would take one phrase, and listen. Then, I would play it really slow, over and over, hundreds of times, until read more...