Burlington Discover Jazz Festival is back for it's 42nd year. This year's festival, produced by the Flynn and presented by Vermont Tire And Service Inc. with Nokian Tyres, takes place across Downtown Burlington The Flynn is also thrilled to announce that Anthony Tidd, an international jazz artist, multi-instrumentalist and Guggenheim Fellow, will serve as the curator for the 2025 Burlington Discover Jazz Festival. Tidd will present an exclusive World Premiere of Origins: Sounds and Stories of the African Diaspora, a collaborative performance showcasing seven jazz musicians and seven special guests.

Schedule of Events:

Flynn Main Stage

6:00 PM - Translinear Light: The Music of Alice Coltrane
Featuring Ravi Coltrane
with Special Guest Brandee Younger

Main Stage
$32 - $63.5

The City of Burlington's Great Streets initiative is ongoing. Visit the city's website for information about Main Street construction and detours. Please allow extra time to get to the theater.

Alice Coltrane's pioneering and trailblazing career has changed the course of history. She forged masterful creative works that beam universal love and spirituality to anyone that is listening and laid the groundwork for musicians for years to come to do the same.

To honor her legacy, 2025 has been declared the Year of Alice, The celebration will included tributary musical events as well as recording released to celebrate her life and legacy.

In collaboration with the Coltrane Family, Foundation and Home, The Year of Alice is sure to inspire as well as illuminate the breath and genius that was Alice Coltrane.

Location: Flynn Main Stage 153 Main Street, Burlington, VT 05401.

Big Joe's
at Vermont Comedy Club

8:30 PM and 10:00 PM - Melissa Aldana

A fascinating paradox defines Echoes Of The Inner Prophet, Melissa Aldana's 2024 follow-up to her acclaimed Blue Note Records debut as a leader, 2022's 12 Stars. As the GRAMMY-nominated saxophonist and composer explains, her new album reflects her "personal journey, with an especially introspective point of view. The inner prophet is my own self, now older, who has the knowledge and the intuition and the truth about what my path should be.

"So it's this idea of connecting with that inner prophet," she continues, "which reveals things about myself, including those things I don't like."

At the same time, this deeply intimate, searching project is a celebration of collaboration and community. It documents the evolution of her quintet — Lage Lund, guitar and effects; Fabian Almazan, piano and effects; Pablo Menares, bass; Kush Abadey, drums — capturing the collective insight they've garnered after extensive touring and travel, and arguing for their place among the most incisive working groups in jazz today.

Aldana was born in Santiago, Chile and grew up in a musical family. Both her father and grandfather were saxophonists and she took up the instrument at age six under her father Marcos' tutelage. Aldana began on alto, influenced by artists such as Charlie Parker and Cannonball Adderley, but switched to tenor upon first hearing the music of Sonny Rollins. She performed in Santiago jazz clubs in her early teens and was invited by pianist Danilo Pérez to play at the Panama Jazz Festival in 2005.

Aldana moved to the U.S. to attend the Berklee College of Music, and the year after graduating she released her first album Free Fall on Greg Osby's Inner Circle label in 2010, followed by Second Cycle in 2012. In 2013, at 24, she 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. After her win, she released her third album Melissa Aldana And Crash Trio (Concord Jazz, 2014). Other releases followed-Back Home (Wommusic, 2016) and the Frida Kahlo-inspired album Visions (Motéma, 2019), which earned the saxophonist her first-ever GRAMMY nomination for Best Improvised Jazz Solo.

Aldana was one of the founding members of ARTEMIS, the all-star collective that released their debut album ARTEMIS on Blue Note in the Fall of 2020. The album featured Aldana's simmering composition "Frida," which was dedicated to Mexican painter Frida Kahlo, who inspired the musician through "her own process of finding self-identity through art."

Aldana is also an in-demand clinician and educator, and the New England Conservatory's Jazz Studies Department recently appointed her to their jazz faculty beginning in the Fall of 2021.

Location: Vermont Comedy Club 101 Main St Burlington, VT 05401

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