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Miguel Zenon: Alma adentro: The Puerto Rican Songbook
by AAJ Italy Staff
Alma adentro è l'album della definitiva consacrazione dell'altosassofonista portoricano Miguel Zenon, nella duplice veste di arrangiatore e bandeader. Una inedita combinazione timbrica tra colori classici e jazzistici porta a livelli di assoluta eccellenza una musica di grande fascino. È un progetto che supera le rigide barriere delle convenzioni contemporanee per proporre qualcosa di diverso rispetto all'anima esuberante della musica centroamericana. La musica tradizionale di Porto Rico viene prima riattualizzata secondo l'ottica del jazz, poi (ri)considerata alla luce di sinuose sonorità ...
Continue ReadingThe Miguel Zenon Quartet: Half Moon Bay, CA, November 20, 2011
by Bill Leikam
The Miguel Zenón QuartetDouglas Beach House aka Bach Dancing & Dynamite SocietyHalf Moon Bay, CaliforniaNovember 20, 2011 On a clear Sunday afternoon, alto saxophonist Miguel Zenón brought on his seasoned quartet to play the Douglas Beach House. With a near-capacity audience, it was a rare gift to hear this quartet--also featuring Venezuelan pianist Luis Perdomo, Austrian bassist Hans Glawischnig and Puerto Rican drummer Henry Cole--led by the Puerto Rican saxophonist extraordinaire. The concert, which ...
Continue ReadingMiguel Zenon: Jazz Sherpa
by Lawrence Peryer
At the dawn of the second decade of his career, saxophonist Miguel Zenón has established himself as one of the most sophisticated and stylish players of the new millennium. In a very short time, Zenón has made his mark as a composer, band leader, educator, and jazz advocate. He has performed and recorded with scores of the scene's most prominent musicians as leader, side man and member of the groundbreaking SFJAZZ Collective, where he is the sole founding member remaining ...
Continue ReadingMiguel Zenon: Alma Adentro: The Puerto Rican Songbook
by Dan McClenaghan
The cover photo on alto saxophonist Miguel Zenón's Alma Adentro: The Puerto Rican Songbook is of two people dancing in the middle of a boulevard. They are nicely dressed. The man's coat tail flies and their dance clasp is a passionate embrace, suggestive of a romantic yearning hitched to the side of a good time, a posture suggesting a sense of pride and dignity. And that's what the music on this release is, in large part, all about.On ...
Continue ReadingMiguel Zenon: Alma Adentro - The Puerto Rican Songbook
by Dan Bilawsky
Miguel ZenonAlma Adentro: The Puerto Rican SongbookMarsalis Music2011 When so-called “Latin jazz" comes up in conversation, music or musicians connected to Cuba or Brazil are usually the topic of conversation. While it's true that Afro-Cuban stylings, bossa nova beats and sizzling samba numbers seem to dominate in this umbrella category, they're only the tip of the iceberg that is the music of Latin America. Thankfully, some important jazz musicians are helping ...
Continue ReadingMiguel Zenon: Esta Plena
by David Adler
Like a nimble jet aircraft, Miguel Zenón's Esta Plena leaps into flight from its very first notes. The album arrives not long after Awake (Marsalis Music, 2008), Zenón's jazz quartet/string quartet outing of 2008, but it follows more logically on the heels of 2005's Jíbaro (Marsalis Music), a jazz meditation on the rural music of Zenón's native Puerto Rico. Esta Plena, different but related, finds the alto saxophonist melding authentic plena music with the forward-thinking jazz aesthetic he's developed as ...
Continue ReadingMiguel Zenon: Esta Plena
by Mark F. Turner
From the fruits of winning both a MacArthur ("genius grant") and Guggenheim Fellowship in 2008, alto saxophonist Miguel Zenón, expands his clear vision of modern jazz and Puerto Rican folk music in Esta Plena. With an incisive voice, his involvement with the SFJAZZ Collective, Guillermo Klein's Y Los Gauchos and Charlie Haden's Liberation Music Orchestra is well documented, but his own recordings are what truly reflect his unique heritage and identity. Where Zenón's Jibaro (Marsalis Music, 2005) ...
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