Bridges

Once upon a time ago, Alejandra Gala had no idea that music would be her calling. Once an elite synchronized swimmer on Uruguay’s national team, she transitioned to the music scene after wading the waters as an acrobat in a circus. She gradually found her way to the music stand, first as a guitarist and later with the horn, finally understanding how her creativity and emotion can be expressed through sonic beauty. Her restless nature has her searching to the tune of her own soul, in constant search of her voice. Her musical sensibility is nourished by both movement and a return to her roots—drawing from jazz, electronic experimentation, the sounds of her homeland, and an ever-expanding harmonic universe.

Now based in Boston, she seeks to establish herself as a bridge between Uruguay and the global music scene as a trumpet player, guitarist and composer.

Growing up by the sea in Montevideo, Alejandra was shaped by an environment that blended creativity with discipline. Her artistic journey soon became a global one: she spent several months in Havana, where she began her formal music training and decided to make it her life path. She later lived in Buenos Aires and traveled frequently to Brazil and the U.S. to explore her musical curiosities and immerse herself into the musical sensibilities of the continent.

Some of her most formative experiences came at Berklee College of Music, where she became the first Uruguayan ever accepted into the Global Jazz Institute. There, she collaborated and studied with masters such as John Patitucci, Danilo Pérez, and Nicholas Payton. At Berklee, she also reunited with pianist Kris Davis—whom she first met at the Buenos Aires Jazz Festival in 2019—and soon joined the Institute of Jazz and Gender Justice, deepening her engagement with issues of tradition, identity, and gender in music. A defining chapter of her career has been her work with Mestizas, an international ensemble founded at Berklee in 2019 where Alejandra contributes as a composer, arranger, performer, and producer. Now evolved into a quartet joined by her twin sister Patricia Ligia on bass, Cuban pianist Estefanía Núñez Villamandos and Spanish flutist Paloma Cosano, the group explores the intersections of flamenco, Latin jazz, candombe and songwriting.

Her solo project, GALA, has blossomed into two recent performance works: No-Plan, a concert that invites audiences into a space of introspection through presence and improvisation—the freer side of Alejandra’s musical identity—  and Candombe Meets Bostonia, a blend of candombe traditional songs with jazz, where she featured Noah Preminger on tenor sax and John Lockwood on bass.

Currently, she is preparing to release her debut album, Bajó del árbol un tambor, scheduled for summer 2026 with La Reserve Records. The project developed as part of her thesis at Berklee’s Global Jazz Institute, is titled “Tradition and Gender: A Story About Symbols, Women, and Rhythm.”