Internationally
acclaimed saxophonist and composer Miguel Zenón performs thirteen dates in eleven
European cities from July 3 – July 17, 2015. Joined by his quartet featuring
drummer Henry Cole, pianist Luis Perdomo and bassist Hans Glawischnig, Zenón
performs music from his groundbreaking recording Identities are Changeable, a
project focusing on the cultural identity of the Puerto Rican community in NYC.
They appear:
Friday, July
3: Funchal Jazz Festival, Madeira, Portugal
Saturday,
July 4 – Sunday, July 5: Hot Club, Lisbon, Portugal
Monday, July
6: Copenhagen Jazz Festival, Copenhagen, Denmark
Wednesday,
July 8: Unterfahrt, Munich, Germany
Thursday,
July 9: Sunside, Paris, France
Friday, July
10: Ezcaray Jazz Festival, Ezcaray, Spain
Saturday,
July 11 – Sunday, July 12: Bogui Jazz,
Madrid, Spain
Tuesday,
July 14: Umbria Jazz Festival, Umbria, Italy
Wednesday,
July 15: Jimmy Glass, Valencia, Spain
Thursday,
July 16: Festival des Hauts de Garonnes, Bordeaux, France
Friday, July
17: Pori Jazz Festival, Pori, Finland
Multiple
Grammy® nominee and Guggenheim and MacArthur Fellow Zenón is one of a select
group of musicians who have masterfully balanced and blended the
often-contradictory poles of innovation and tradition. Widely considered one of
the most groundbreaking and influential saxophonists of his generation, he has
also developed a unique voice as a composer and as a conceptualist,
concentrating his efforts on perfecting a fine mix between Latin American
folkloric music and jazz. Born and raised in San Juan, Puerto Rico, Zenón has
recorded and toured with a wide variety of musicians including Charlie Haden,
Fred Hersch, Kenny Werner, Bobby Hutcherson and Steve Coleman and is a founding
member of the SFJAZZ Collective.
He has
earned wide critical acclaim for Identities are Changeable. For this project the alto saxophonist and
composer asked his friends the question he had been asking himself:
What does it
mean to be Puerto Rican in 21st-century New York City?
That was the
point of departure for Identities Are Changeable, the startlingly original
album by Zenón, who grew up in the island’s main city of San Juan and came to
New York in 1998 to pursue a career in music.
Zenón’s
experience of moving via the air bridge from the small Antillean island to the
landing strip 1600 miles north is something he shares with hundreds of
thousands of other “Puerto Rican-New Yorkers.” Puerto Ricans are not immigrants
in the United States: for nearly a century – since 1917 – Puerto Ricans have,
unlike other natives of Latin America, been US citizens, able to come and go as
they please between the island of Puerto Rico and the mainland. When they come
north, overwhelmingly they go to New York City. After different waves of
migration over the decades – most numerously in the 1950s – about 1.2 million
“Puerto Rican-Americans” were living in the greater New York area as of 2012.
Zenón did
his own fieldwork for the project, interviewing New Yorkers of Puerto Rican
descent, focusing on their experience as second-generation Puerto Ricans. The
conversations centered on a single question: what makes a Puerto Rican a Puerto
Rican. As Zenón notes: “There is, of course, no correct answer, but the many
answers and impressions that came from these conversations eventually served as
the main source of inspiration for the music on this piece. Video images and
audio clips from these interviews interact with the music and make a case for
the fact that national identity can be multiple and changeable—that in many
cases our nationality can be within us, no matter where we’re from or the
language we speak.”
Zenón has
expanded his musical and theatrical boundaries with this ambitious big band
project built around his longtime quartet and accompanying video. Identities
Are Changeable is a thrilling counterpoint of music, language, and images.
Cross-cutting between Puerto Rico and New York, it’s all about living
contrapuntally, exploring the split focus of Puerto Rican cultural identity, by
unpacking foundational forces such as family, language, ritual, neighborhood,
and memory. Zenón investigates this dichotomy in composition and arrangements,
coupled with his sensuous and soulful mastery of the saxophone. In Identities
Are Changeable, he scales new heights as cultural guide.
The
resultant work is a song cycle for large ensemble, with his longtime quartet
(Luis Perdomo, piano; Hans Glawischnig, bass; Henry Cole, drums) at the center,
incorporating recorded voices from a series of interviews conducted by Zenón.
Commissioned as a multi-media work by Montclair State University’s Peak
Performances series, it has a multi-media element with audio and video footage
from the interviews, complemented by a video installation created by artist
David Dempewolf. It’s been performed at such prestigious venues as the New
England Conservatory’s Jordan Hall in Boston, The SFJAZZ Center in San
Francisco, and Zankel Hall in the Carnegie Hall complex in New York City.
Zenón
explains: “all of the compositions explore the idea of multiple rhythmic
structures coexisting with each other (e.g., 5 against 7, 3 against 2, 5
against 3).” Drummer Henry Cole has his hands (and feet) full holding down the
simultaneous time streams, as does Zenón when he conducts the group live. The
players are a selected elite team – hear John Ellis’s tenor solo on “Same
Fight,” or Tim Albright’s trombone feature on “First Language.” There’s no way
to convey in words the impact of the orchestral effects, but reviewing the
Zankel Hall performance for The New York Times, Ben Ratliff writes:
“[The] sound
and language didn’t directly suggest traditional Puerto Rican music or
traditional jazz. Its rhythm was phrased almost completely in stacked or odd
meter, with parts of the band shifting into double or half time, and Mr.
Zenón’s saxophone darting around the chord changes or resting on top, in long
tones.
There was
drama and momentum in the music’s developing harmonic movement; at times a
shift to a new chord felt like an event. All the music was deeply hybridized
and original, complex but clear.”
It’s all at
the service of Zenón’s relentless curiosity, as he writes in the album’s liner
notes:
When I first
came into contact with Puerto Rican communities in this country, I was shocked
to meet second and third generation Puerto Ricans who were as connected to the
traditions of their parents/grandparents and as proud to be Puerto Rican as the
people I knew back home. Where was this sense of pride coming from? What did
they consider their first language? Their home? What did it mean to them to be
Puerto Rican? What are the elements that help us shape our national identity?
If the music
doesn’t directly answer these questions, it provides a way into thinking about
them. Like Zenón’s other music, it’s about an entire society, but it’s deeply
personal.
Identities
are Changeable was released November 4, 2014 on Zenon’s Miel Music.
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