Aida Brandes-Hargrove started her professional career as a teenager working as a singer and dancer for artists from across different genres like RnB singer Joe, David Hasselhoff and Menudo’s Angelo Garcia and performing for companies like Reebok and Fila. At 19 she was signed to major recording studio in Germany as part of a duo and opened for acts like Boyz II Men and MC Lyte. Aida is self taught and draws from a diverse pool of music with its main roots in jazz, hip hop and rnb. She also plays piano and works as an arranger.

Her Big Band arrangements have been featured by the Roy Hargrove Big Band, Slide Hampton, the Astoria Big Band and the NYC Ska Orchestra. Her original songs have been finalists and winners in the John Lennon Songwriting Contest, as well as the Great American Song Contest. Other official selections include the Long Island International Film Expo, Golden Door International Film Festival, Lady Filmmakers Festival.

Aida regularly performs with the NYC Ska Orchestra, a 20-piece big band where she is also an arranger. In addition to her arrangements in their regular repertoire she was the official arranger for the band's collaboration with DMC of Run DMC. They premiered the 20-minute segment at their sold out show at City Winery NYC in April 2025. Other recent work includes performances with the Justin Robinson Quintet, Lorenzo Sandi Trio, Bruce Edwards Quartet, Joe Farnsworth Quartet, Jon Davis & Gianluca Renzi Trio.

Aida is the widow of the late, great trumpeter Roy Hargrove and the president of Roy Hargrove Legacy, a company she founded with his daughter Kamala to preserve and extend his legacy and celebrate his contributions to jazz and beyond. Aida runs the day to day operations of the company and oversees its music releases, as well as its publishing arm Roy Hargrove Legacy Publishing.

She is also the director of the Roy Hargrove Big Band, which she relaunched in early 2022 with the help of long time big band alumni Bruce Williams and Jason Marshall. The big band features mainly original band members with the addition of a few bright, young talents and has a monthly residency at The Jazz Gallery, a NYC venue that Roy co-founded. Other venues include Dizzy's Club, City Winery, True Blue Jazz Festival, Riddim & Jazz Festival, SOPAC, Vassar College, Trinity Church.

Since its founding Roy Hargrove Legacy has released “In Harmony”, a live duo recording featuring Roy and Mulgrew Miller with Resonance Records , “The Love Suite: In Mahogany”, Roy’s historic live performance of his five-movement composition written on commission at Alice Tully Hall in 1993, which was released with JALC and Blue Engine Records. 2024 saw the long awaited release of “Grande-Terre” with Verve Records. The album was a previously unreleased studio recording by Roy's latin band Roy Hargrove's Crisol, recorded in Guadeloupe in 1998. To celebrate the release Aida also put together the first live performance of the album, which featured the original core members of the band and took place at City Winery NYC as part of Winter Jazz Fest 2025.

Roy Hargrove Legacy has also been instrumental in getting albums re-released that had not previously been available on digital platforms, such as “The Jazz Futures - Live in Concert” and five albums of the Jazz Networks, as well as “Oscar Peterson meets Roy Hargrove and Ralph Moore” and Cedar Walton’s “The Composer”. All of these albums feature Roy and are important records in the Jazz catalog.