Melissa Aldana at Hammer4 Studio

Hammer Theatre Center continues its Black Cab Jazz series with Grammy-nominated saxophonist and composer Melissa Aldana, who has garnered international recognition for her visionary work as a band leader, as well as her deeply meditative interpretation of language and vocabulary. Her album Visions was among the best albums of 2019 for NPR Music and earned the saxophonist her first-ever Grammy nomination for “Best Improvised Jazz Solo.” Born in Santiago, Chile, Aldana took up the saxophone at age six under her father’s tutelage. She performed in Santiago jazz clubs in her early teens and was invited by pianist Danilo Perez to play at the Panama Jazz Festival in 2005. In 2013, at the age of 24, Aldana 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.