Miguel Zenon: The Afro-Cuban Jazz Avant-Garde

Last Saturday, September 21, 2013, we saw Miguel Zenon at Chicago's Jazz Showcase. Zenon is a jazz sax player who appeared with the Rhythm Collective (Aldemar Valentin, six-string electric bass, Tony Escapa, drums and Reynaldo de Jesus, percussion). If you have never heard him or his music (and I had not, until Saturday night), it's time to catch up. Zenon is leading the new Afro-Cuban jazz Avant-Garde. He is a multiple Grammy nominee, Guggenheim Fellow, MacArthur Fellow and educator from Puerto Rico.

The video above displays Zenon playing music from the Puerto Rican Song Book (songs from the George Gershwins, Cole Porters and Jerome Kerns of Puerto Rican music--beautiful music you have probably never heard before) with a great jazz quartet and ten piece woodwind ensemble. The video below features Zenon at New York's Village Vanguard, this time with the same quartet (Luis Perdomo, piano, Hans Glawischnig, double bass, and Henry Cole, drums) playing Zenon's original compositions. The video below has the same feel as his live performance at the Jazz Showcase. In Chicago, he started the set with Charlie Parker's She Rote and ended with Tito Puente's Oye Como Va, with original music in between.

Enjoy! Catch Up! Afro-Cuban Avant-Garde Jazz is very accessible, new music! How did we decide to see him if we had never either heard of him or his music? You can go to anything at the Jazz Showcase and know it will be the best live Jazz you can hear outside New York city and the ticket price is right ($25, Saturday night, no drink minimum--unlike New York city). The Jazz Showcase has music seven nights a week and you can find discount coupons for the weeknight performances with the concierge at either your hotel or at the Blackstone Hotel (where the Jazz Showcase used to be prior to 2008).



I should also comment that Aldemar Valentin played six-string bass like you have probably never heard  electric bass played before. First, the typical jazz quartet has some rhythm instrument (guitar or piano, as in the clip above). Zenon appeared in Chicago without a rhythm instrument, but Valentin filled the gap by playing the six string bass very much like the six string guitar with arpeggio bass lines and three or four note block chords, especially on the slower tempo pieces.