Julieta Eugenio

Tenor Sax icon Tenor Sax

36 age

January 22, 1990 Birthday

Necochea, Buenos Aires, Argentina Birthplace

www.julieta-eugenio.com Website

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Julieta Eugenio is an Argentine tenor saxophonist, composer, and bandleader based in New York City. Known for her warm, contemplative tone and melody-first compositional approach, she leads a pianoless trio with bassist Matt Dwonszyk and drummer Jonathan Barber. The trio won the 2022 DCJazzPrix International Band Competition and has released two albums: Jump (2022, Greenleaf Music) and Stay (2024, Cristalyn Records). In 2017, she won the International Women in Jazz Competition as a member of the SIJ Trio, and in 2023 was named one of ten jazz emerging artists to watch by Grammy Magazine. She has collaborated with Roy Hargrove, Johnny O'Neal, Leon Parker, and Dee Dee Bridgewater, and performed at Dizzy's Club, Smalls, the Kennedy Center, and the Joyce Theater.

Trivia

Eugenio experiences synesthesia — she associates her composition "Efes" with a yellow-orange hue and visual patterns of the letter F. She composes melodies before harmonies, an inversion of the typical jazz compositional process. The title of her debut album Jump references not just her move to New York but what she describes as "a jump into the unknown, the adrenaline of letting it go and feeling free again." Her trio composed "Raccoon Tune" after a raccoon repeatedly appeared outside her Queens apartment window.

Early Life

Julieta Eugenio was born on January 22, 1990, in Necochea, a small coastal city approximately five hours south of Buenos Aires, Argentina. She began studying music at age nine at the Instituto Orquestal de Necochea under Juan Carlos Gesualdi, initially on piano before switching to alto saxophone a year later. During her teens, she played clarinet in a Dixieland-style band at the institute. At eighteen, she moved to Buenos Aires to study at the Manuel de Falla Conservatory for Jazz Performance, where she switched from alto to tenor saxophone after discovering that the lower register better suited her expressive voice. She performed regularly in Buenos Aires jazz clubs with her own trio and as a member of Eloy Michelini's quintet. In 2013, she moved to New York City to pursue a master's degree at Queens College's Aaron Copland School of Music, studying under Antonio Hart, Jeb Patton, and David Berkman.