El Arte Del Bolero
Saxophonist Miguel Zenón is one of today's leading jazz giants. He may live in New York with several Grammy nominations under his belt by now, but his roots are in Puerto Rico. There, the songs of singers like Ismael Rivera, Cheo Feliciano and Andy Montañez are commonplace.
Together with his duo partner, Venezuelan pianist Luis Perdomo, he digs into the beloved repertoire of the Cuban Bolero. The popular Latin American ballad has traversed all of South America and landed in the heart of NYC.
Read Miguel Zenón's letter via "read more.
Support: Lara Rosseel solo
What do fruits and vegetables sound like? You'll find out in artist in residence Lara Rosseel's solo "Aardnoot".
Fruit
fruit and vegetables
the inside, the kernel, the germ,
they all bring forth a frequency,
which I translate on my double bass.
Thus each fruit has a different frequency, a different bass song.
A message from Miguel Zenón
"As an instrumentalist, I spend a lot of my time working on making the saxophone an extension of my creative process. This process is always filtered through interpretation and expressiveness, and more often than not I find myself looking up to some of my favorite singers (people like Ismael Rivera, Cheo Feliciano and Andy Montañez) as sources of inspiration. In their individual voices I can hear a reflection of their unique personalities, all manifested at the highest level through their interpretation of songs. These melodies become vehicles for their creativity—a canvas on which they’ll portray their feelings and states of mind.
But these are not just any songs. These are songs they have heard hundreds of times, familiar pieces of music they know very well, and that is sort of the way I feel about the repertoire on this album. We chose compositions from the Bolero era that we could just play right away, without giving it a second thought: songs from the times of our parents and grandparents that somehow stuck around long enough for us to get to know them and truly love them. They are all as essential to our development as the music of Charlie Parker, John Coltrane or Thelonious Monk, but perhaps even more familiar. When we play these songs, we can hear the lyrics in the back of our minds—something that provides a very deep connection, one that is hard to replicate in any other situation. It really is almost beyond familiar. These songs are part of us.
We recorded this music as a live show, all in one take, without much preparation other than discussing tonalities and some basic elements on form. We were more than pleasantly surprised with the results and decided that they deserved to be shared. There is nothing like making music with someone else, finding a common language we can grab onto and then just going and exploring that together. We hope this comes across here, and that you enjoy the music."
Miguel Zenón
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