Melissa Aldana
Tenor Sax Solo on
Billie's Bounce

About

Melissa Aldana's tenor saxophone solo on Charlie Parker's Billie's Bounce is the eighth of nine solos in this WBGO broadcast concert, and her most extended statement of the program. She stretches across eleven choruses of the 12-bar blues at 221 BPM, building a sustained, architecturally coherent improvisation that develops motivic ideas with increasing rhythmic and harmonic intensity across the blues form. The extended length gives Aldana space to explore Parker's bebop blues vocabulary while asserting her own voice, cycling through varied approaches to the familiar changes. Her solo precedes Cohen's ten-chorus piano statement, together making the Parker blues the concert's climactic musical exchange.

Melissa Aldana was 32 to 33 years old at the time.