On Thursday, November 10 at Harlem Stage in New York, saxophonist, composer and arranger Miguel Zenón will perform music from Alma Adentro: The Puerto Rican Songbook, his critically acclaimed new recording of classic Puerto Rican songs for Marsalis Music. Joining Zenón on the date is his core quartet featuring Luis Perdomo (piano), Hans Glawischnig (bass), and Henry Cole (drums).

Alma Adentro: The Puerto Rican Songbook is comprised of ten pieces, two each by Bobby Capó, Tite Curet Alonso, Pedro Flores, Rafael Hernández, and Sylvia Rexach, who Zenón refers to as “the George Gershwins, Cole Porters and Jerome Kerns of Puerto Rican song,” and it features his regular quartet augmented by a 10-piece wind ensemble. The music was arranged by Zenón and orchestrated by Argentine pianist, composer and arranger Guillermo Klein.

“This project grew out of my interest in exploring the history and development of The Puerto Rican song,” says Zenón. “… I started focusing on the similar characteristics between The Puerto Rican Songbook and The Great American Songbook, not only musically, but also in terms of cultural impact. From there on, the project started to take shape.”

Zenón has explored his musical heritage previously in albums such as Jibaro (2005), in which he revisited the country music of Puerto Rico, and last year’s Esta Plena, in which he reinterpreted the traditional plena style.

In 2008, Miguel Zenón was one of 25 individuals selected to receive the MacArthur Fellow Genius Grant. In 2011, he founded a program called “Caravana Cultural,” with the purpose of presenting free jazz concerts to rural areas of his native Puerto Rico, exposing the communities to high caliber performances and special guests, as well as utilizing local young musicians.

A founding member of the groundbreaking SFJAZZ Collective, in 2012, Zenon will expand his role as the new resident artistic director.

Click the image to hear Miguel talk about the making of Alma Adentro

The biographies of the five composers featured on Alma Adentro: The Puerto Rican Songbook can be read here in English and Spanish.

Release Date: August 30, 2011 (Marsalis Music)

***

“On Alma Adentro: The Puerto Rican Songbook, [Miguel] Zenón’s longstanding quartet – augmented by a 10-piece wind ensemble – offers boldly virtuosic reworkings of two tunes apiece from five of Puerto Rico’s most beloved songwriters. Zenón keeps the melodies recognizable but takes rhythmic and harmonic liberties in making the songs his own…everything here is dear to Zenón, and it shows.” – Bill Beuttler, Boston Globe

“Alma Adentro: The Puerto Rican Songbook is the third record [Miguel Zenón]‘s made that analyzes Puerto Rican music from the ground up and connects it, with great originality, to new jazz practice. This is a sumptous record…It contains sequences that sound admirable but ordinary – an able, flexible new jazz quartet, doing things we’ve possibly heard before – and then pockets of real brilliance.” – Ben Ratliff, The New York Times

“Zenón’s far from the first jazz musician from Latin America to winningly unite jazz and the folkloric and popular musics of his homeland. But with Alma Adentro, Zenón has set a superb standard for this kind of endeavour, and fashioned something beautiful, important and lasting.” – Peter Hum, Ottawa Citizen