Miguel Zenón Quartet
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Sunday, August 14, 2011 | Magnolia San Jose Rep Stage | 4pm
Earthy and sophisticated, the music Miguel Zenón is rooted in the traditional plena music of Zenón's native Puerto Rico – reinterpreted with the sensibility, the approach and the tools of 21st century jazz. In his liner notes, Zenón defines plena as “a by-product of Spanish Colonization, combining African rhythmic syncopations with European harmonies and melodic cadences.”
Moreover, since its emergence in the 19th century in Ponce, on the southern coast of Puerto Rico, plena has been the music of the disenfranchised and has functioned as an oral newspaper. Singing to the rhythms of the panderos, or hand-held drums, the pleneros, or plena singers, “described the events of everyday life as experienced by the impoverished classes of the Puerto Rican population,” explains Zenón. “These lyrics eventually expanded to include themes of patriotism, social protest, love, humor, and just plain appreciation for the plena and the pandero.”
The Grammy Nominee and Guggenheim/MacArthur Fellow studied classical saxophone at the famed Escuela Libre de Musica in San Juan. Although Zenón was exposed to jazz while in high school, it wasn’t until he began his studies at the Berklee School of Music that his formal jazz training began. After graduating from Berklee, Zenón received a scholarship to attend Manhattan School of Music and in 2001, he received a Masters in Saxophone Performance.
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“[Zenón] is reestablishing the artistic, cultural, and social tradition of jazz while creating an entirely new jazz language for the 21st century.” —The MacArthur Foundation
Genre: jazz fusion
Miguel Zenon, saxophone
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