The Sydney International Women’s Jazz Festival was opened in splendid fashion on Thursday night at the Seymour Centre. An exceedingly generous audience, estimated at 500, was  treated to music rarely heard in Sydney.

Melissa Aldana. Photo © Shane Rozario

For various reasons the world is now full of brilliant tenor saxophonists – there are many in Australia, as we know – and Chilean-born Melissa Aldana, courtesy of clever marketing over the 12 years she’s been in New York, has pushed her way to the top and become a phenomenon. She has never looked back since winning the Thelonious Monk International Saxophone Competition in 2013 at the tender age of 24, and she’s been inestimably assisted by fortuitous career moves such as her commission in 2018 to compose the suite Visions: For Frida Kahlo. She’s now a popular celebrity and darling of social media, and her website has been described as a masterpiece.

The publicity surrounding her Australian tour certainly arrested a long drought in coverage of jazz in important sections of the local media. Aldana appeared in the ‘Spotlight’ section of The Weekend Australian’s Review – the first time a...