Echoes & Inspirations: Melissa Aldana’s Jazz Journey

Melissa Aldana / Taylor Eigsti

January 17, 2026

Tickets: https://www.sfjazz.org

Excavating a Personal Voice

The evolution of a jazz musician often unfolds like a geological process: layers of influence, discipline, and lived experience compress over time until the pressure yields something rare, durable, and unmistakably personal.

For Melissa Aldana, the Chilean saxophonist and composer who made history as the first female instrumentalist to win the Thelonious Monk International Jazz Saxophone Competition, this stage of her career is defined less by accumulation than by excavation. Her appearance at SFJAZZ’s Miner Auditorium on January 17, 2026, finds an artist turned inward, stripping away inherited language to arrive at a sound that feels newly clarified and deeply her own.

Finding the Tenor

Aldana’s relationship with the saxophone feels inevitable. Born in Santiago to a family of saxophonists, she began studying the instrument under her father’s guidance, initially on alto. But a formative encounter at age 12 set her course decisively: hearing Sonny Rollins for the first time.

“I was just 12 years old when I first heard him. I could relate to the sound of his tenor,” Aldana recalls. “To this day, every time I hear his voice, I think of him playing. He changes my mood. It brings me back home.” The connection went beyond admiration. “There’s something mystical about all of this because it’s very intuitive. I can’t explain why, but I have a very deep attachment to the tenor, specifically to its sound. It just feels like it’s part of me—part of my personality.”

Letting Go of the Masters

For years, Aldana’s development followed the traditional path of deep immersion in the masters. She transcribed extensively, not merely chasing notes or vocabulary but seeking what she describes as the emotional DNA of the players she loved most. That process served her well, establishing her as one of the most searching and lyrical tenor saxophonists of her generation. Yet her most recent Blue Note release, Echoes of the Inner Prophet, signals a decisive shift—from external emulation to internal reckoning.

“At this point in my life, I think this is the journey of being a human being, going deeper into who you are,” Aldana says. “For my whole life, the most significant part of my process has been transcribing and imitating someone—not the licks, but the emotional component of how someone plays.” Eventually, that approach reached its limits. “It gets to a point where you’re like, ‘Okay, I’ve transcribed so many Sonny Rollins solos, and there’s so much more to learn, but I’m not really challenging myself anymore.’”

Grief, Growth, and the Inner Prophet

Letting go of those foundational influences proved surprisingly painful. “When those musical crises come, for me, I usually go, ‘Okay, I’m going to stop listening to Sonny for a while,’” she admits. “It feels like grief. You lose somebody in your life.” That sense of loss, she explains, is inseparable from growth. “As important as the process of learning from that is, the process of letting it go is very important—accepting how you sound and saying ‘okay’ instead of ‘I don’t like this about my playing.’”

That reckoning lies at the heart of Echoes of the Inner Prophet, an album shaped by introspection and psychological inquiry. On tracks like “Unconscious Whispers,” Aldana explores the tension between conscious intention and the quieter, often contradictory voices beneath the surface. “‘Unconscious Whispers,’ on a personal level, talks about all those inner voices—different aspects of oneself, your shadows, your light,” she says. “Listening to those whispers is a very important part of the process of getting in touch with the inner prophet.”

Wayne Shorter and the Power of Space

The album also serves as a direct and implicit tribute to Wayne Shorter, whose influence on Aldana extends beyond sound into philosophy. Shorter, a judge at her Monk Competition victory, looms large in her compositional thinking, particularly in the title track. “When I think about Wayne, I think about colors,” she says. The piece unfolds with cinematic restraint. “It’s a song that makes you contemplate and reflect. The idea I had when I was writing it is like a boat in the middle of the ocean, with nothing around, and you’re just contemplating your life and listening to what’s going on around you.”

Live at SFJAZZ

That emphasis on space, patience, and egoless interaction carries directly into Aldana’s live performances. Her SFJAZZ appearance—part of the UpSwing series curated by Terence Blanchard—features her working quintet: guitarist Lage Lund, pianist Fabian Almazan, bassist Pablo Menares, and drummer Kush Abadey. The evening is a double bill with Bay Area native and fellow Grammy winner Taylor Eigsti, a pianist Aldana describes as “somebody I’ve looked up to for many, many years.”

Looking Ahead

While Echoes of the Inner Prophet captures a specific moment of self-examination, Aldana’s creative horizon continues to expand. She is already preparing for the 2026 release of Filin, produced by Don Was, an album inspired by Cuba’s bolero and songbook traditions. “The Filin album is about feeling—it’s the Cuban way to express the word ‘feeling,’” she explains, describing her immersion in the work of singer-songwriters from the 1940s through the 1960s. “The idea was to make an album from the American Songbook, but somehow it became something completely different. It opened my mind to music I had never heard before.”

Ultimately, Aldana views performance not as a presentation but as communion. “It’s about meeting expectations—but also about having an experience with the audience,” she says. “Whatever that means, wherever we all are in that moment, it’s about how we can connect through music.” For her, artistic depth and personal work are inseparable. “I don’t think you can go deeper if you don’t do the personal work. They’re very, very much together.”

Her appearance at Miner Auditorium offers the audience a rare opportunity to hear an artist in the midst of that ongoing transformation—rooted in tradition, unafraid of silence, and fully committed to the search.

Show Information

·      Event: Melissa Aldana / Taylor Eigsti (Double Bill)

·      Date: Saturday, January 17, 2026

·      Showtime: 7:30 PM

·      Venue: SFJAZZ Center, Miner Auditorium, San Francisco

·      Tickets & Info: https://www.sfjazz.org/tickets/productions/25-26/melissa-aldana-taylor-eigsti/