Thana Alexa Quartet Brings a Grammy-Nominated Voice and a Global Jazz Palette to The Side Door
Thana Alexa Quartet brings vocalist, composer, and sonic experimenter Thana Alexa to The Side Door Jazz Club in Old Lyme on Friday, September 18, for an intimate performance that stretches jazz well beyond the traditional singer-and-rhythm-section format.
Alexa will be joined by Alejandra Sofia on keyboards and vocals, JC Maillard on guitar and vocals, and Jacquelene Acevedo on percussion and vocals.
That instrumentation offers a clue about what to expect.
Alexa herself is credited not only with vocals, but also loops, effects, and percussion. Every other member of the quartet contributes vocals. There is no conventional acoustic-bass-and-drum rhythm section in the announced lineup.
Instead, this is a band built around voices, percussion, electronics, keyboards and guitar, giving Alexa room to move between contemporary jazz, improvisation, world music and the sounds of her Croatian-American background.
Thana Alexa Uses Her Voice as More Than a Lead Instrument
Calling Alexa a jazz singer doesn’t quite describe what she does.
She is a vocalist, composer, arranger and producer who treats the human voice as both a storytelling instrument and another component of the band.
She can sing a lyric conventionally and then move into wordless improvisation, rhythmic figures, layered vocal textures or electronically manipulated sounds.
That approach has helped establish Alexa as one of the more distinctive vocalists to emerge from contemporary jazz.
Born in New York City to a Croatian family, Alexa spent part of her childhood in Croatia before returning to the United States. She later studied jazz and contemporary music at The New School in New York.
The two worlds never entirely separated.
Her music has increasingly drawn from both her American jazz education and Croatian heritage, particularly as she began exploring questions of family, immigration, femininity and identity in her own compositions.
Those ideas came together most completely on ONA.
ONA Turned Family Stories Into a Grammy-Nominated Album
Released in 2020, ONA takes its title from the Croatian word for “she.”
The album began with stories of the women in Alexa’s family, including generations shaped by migration and cultural change, but developed into something considerably broader: a musical exploration of women’s experiences, strength and identity.
It also became Alexa’s breakthrough recording.
ONA received a Grammy nomination for Best Jazz Vocal Album at the 63rd Grammy Awards.
The album produced a second Grammy nomination through violinist Regina Carter’s performance on Alexa’s composition Pachamama, which was nominated for Best Improvised Jazz Solo.
That distinction is worth making: Alexa herself is a Grammy nominee for ONA, while the album generated two Grammy nominations overall.
The record also demonstrated just how far Alexa was willing to push the vocabulary of vocal jazz.
The Band Coming to Old Lyme Is Built Differently
The quartet announced for The Side Door reflects that experimental side of Alexa’s music.
Thana Alexa handles voice, loops, effects and percussion.
Alejandra Sofia plays keyboards and adds vocals.
JC Maillard plays guitar and contributes vocals.
Jacquelene Acevedo adds percussion and vocals.
Four musicians. Four voices.
Rather than treating backing vocals as decoration behind the lead singer, the configuration gives Alexa a palette of vocal and instrumental sounds that can be stacked, repeated, manipulated and reshaped during a performance.
Loops allow a performer to record a phrase in real time and immediately play it back, building additional musical layers over it. Effects can alter the tone, space and character of a voice just as guitarists have used pedals to reshape the sound of an electric guitar for decades.
Combine that with keyboards, guitar and percussion and the quartet can create a much larger sonic environment than its four-person lineup suggests.
Alexa Has Another Connection to One of Jazz’s Great Modern Drummers
Alexa is also a longtime member of Migration, the ensemble led by drummer and composer Antonio Sánchez, her husband.
Sánchez is best known outside jazz circles for creating the percussion-driven score for Alejandro González Iñárritu’s 2014 film Birdman, but his career reaches much further into contemporary jazz.
Alexa’s work with Migration placed her voice inside music where rhythm, composition and improvisation are deeply intertwined.
That experience is easy to connect with her own approach.
She doesn’t simply stand in front of a jazz band and sing over it.
The voice becomes part of the machinery.
SONICA Put Three Women’s Voices at the Center
Alexa has explored that idea from another direction through SONICA, the vocal trio she formed with singer Nicole Zuraitis and bassist-vocalist Julia Adamy.
The project places vocal harmony, improvisation and original composition at its center, reinforcing Alexa’s interest in treating voices as an ensemble rather than separating a lead singer from accompanying musicians.
That emphasis also connects to another continuing Alexa project: Founding Mothers of Jazz.
The project examines and celebrates women who helped shape jazz while often receiving less attention than their male contemporaries.
For Alexa, that isn’t separate from the music.
Questions about whose stories get told, who gets remembered and whose voices are heard run directly through her work.
Her Croatian Connection Now Extends to a Jazz Festival
Alexa’s relationship with Croatia has also become part of her professional life.
She serves as artistic director of the Ponta Lopud Jazz Festival, held on the Croatian island of Lopud.
The festival brings international jazz musicians together in an environment designed around performance, collaboration and artistic exchange.
It’s another indication of how Alexa’s career has evolved beyond the conventional boundaries of vocalist or bandleader.
She’s a performer, composer and producer, but increasingly also a curator and organizer helping determine which artists and musical ideas get brought together.
Friday’s Side Door appearance brings that much larger musical world into one of Connecticut’s smallest serious jazz rooms.
The Side Door Was Designed for Nights Like This
The setting matters.
The Side Door Jazz Club operates inside the historic Old Lyme Inn at 85 Lyme Street, directly across from the Florence Griswold Museum.
It isn’t a multipurpose room that occasionally presents jazz.
It’s a dedicated listening room.
That makes a substantial difference for a quartet whose music can depend on subtle vocal interactions, electronics, percussion and improvisation.
There isn’t much distance between performer and audience at The Side Door, and the room’s emphasis is on listening rather than providing background music for a bar or restaurant.
For a vocalist who can shift from an intimate lyric to experimental vocal effects in the same performance, that’s exactly the kind of room where the details can be heard.
Dinner Can Be Part of the Night
The Old Lyme Inn gives concertgoers another option before the music begins.
Side Door ticket holders receive 10% off dinner at the Old Lyme Inn on concert nights. The venue recommends scheduling dinner reservations no later than 6 p.m.
Doors for the concert open at 7:15 p.m., with Alexa and the quartet scheduled to begin at 8 p.m.
Seating is reserved rather than general admission, so purchasing a ticket also determines where you’ll be sitting.
The performance is scheduled to run until approximately 10 p.m.
Free parking is available.
A Different Kind of Vocal Jazz
Anyone expecting a conventional evening of standards sung over piano, bass and drums may be surprised by this one.
Alexa certainly comes from jazz.
But she also comes from a generation of musicians for whom electronics, global influences, unconventional instrumentation and studio techniques aren’t outside additions to the genre.
They’re simply more tools.
The announced quartet makes that particularly clear.
Four voices. Guitar. Keyboards. Percussion. Loops. Effects.
And at the center of it all is a singer who seems considerably less interested in fitting comfortably inside the definition of a jazz vocalist than in discovering how much further the human voice can go.
Details
Event: Thana Alexa Quartet
Date: Friday, September 18, 2026
Time: 8–10 p.m.
Doors: 7:15 p.m.
Venue: The Side Door Jazz Club
Address: 85 Lyme Street, Old Lyme, CT 06371
Lineup: Thana Alexa, voice/loops/FX/percussion; Alejandra Sofia, keys/voice; JC Maillard, guitar/voice; Jacquelene Acevedo, percussion/voice
Admission: Ticketed event; current pricing and seat availability should be confirmed through the ticketing page
Seating: Reserved seating
Age: All ages
Parking: Free parking
Dinner: Side Door ticket holders receive 10% off dinner at the Old Lyme Inn; dinner reservations should be scheduled no later than 6 p.m.
Refunds: No refunds
Phone: 860-434-2600
More information is available at the Event Website link below.
To purchase tickets, click the Event Ticketing link below.
Featured image is an artistic representation inspired by the event and may not depict the actual people, location, or activities shown.