Some musical traditions are preserved by repetition. Others survive because artists keep finding new ways to make them feel alive. For alto saxophonist Miguel Zenón and pianist Luis Perdomo, the bolero belongs firmly in the latter category.
The duo returned August 28, 2026, with El Arte del Bolero, Volume 3, the latest installment in a project that began during the isolation of the pandemic and has since developed into one of the most compelling contemporary explorations of the Latin American songbook. Released on Zenón’s Miel Music label, the album will be available on vinyl, CD and all major streaming services.
The new volume continues the approach that made the first two albums so beloved: familiar songs, approached with the freedom, curiosity and spontaneity of jazz.
“There is a concept behind it,” Zenón says, “but the performances are very off-the-cuff and involve very few takes. We just go in and play!”
That philosophy is central to the project’s appeal. Zenón and Perdomo are not attempting to turn these songs into museum pieces, nor are they treating them as exercises in stylistic nostalgia. Instead, they bring decades of shared musical experience to repertoire that has been part of their lives since childhood.
The two musicians have played together in the internationally acclaimed Miguel Zenón Quartet for 27 years. Their musical relationship is built on an extraordinary level of familiarity, allowing them to respond to one another instinctively. Zenón’s distinctive, warm alto sound meets Perdomo’s sensitive and highly expressive piano touch, creating a conversation that can move effortlessly between melody, harmony and improvisation.
That chemistry is particularly well suited to the bolero.
Born in eastern Cuba in the 1880s, the bolero developed as a bittersweet form of love song — music of longing, romance and heartbreak that also became an ideal soundtrack for slow dancing. During the twentieth century, the genre spread throughout Latin America and far beyond, carried by radio, cinema and an expanding popular music industry.
Mexican and other Latin American films of the 1930s and 1940s helped turn bolero singers into stars across the hemisphere while embedding many of the genre’s songs permanently into popular culture.
Few musical forms can claim such a broad Latin American identity. The bolero crossed national and cultural borders while retaining its emotional directness, sophisticated harmonic language and timeless melodies.
Zenón and Perdomo know that world intimately.
Zenón grew up in Santurce, Puerto Rico, while Perdomo was raised in Caracas, Venezuela. Although separated geographically, both were surrounded by the music from an early age, hearing the songs at home through their parents and grandparents.
“We're exploring music that's very familiar to us,” Zenón explains. “For both Luis and myself, it has a personal connection. It's not like I was around when these songs were first written or recorded. It's more like I remember hearing them at home through my parents or grandparents.”
That distinction gives El Arte del Bolero its emotional weight. This is not simply a historical reconstruction of music from another era. It is a personal relationship with music passed down through generations.
The duo approaches the repertoire in much the same way a jazz musician might approach the Great American Songbook.
“We explore it the same way that jazz folks would explore music out of the Great American Songbook,” Zenón says.
The comparison is more than convenient. Many of the composers associated with the bolero tradition were influenced in various ways by jazz, and that connection can be heard in the music’s harmonic movement and song structures. For Zenón and Perdomo, those qualities create an ideal environment for improvisation.
Their versions therefore occupy a space between preservation and reinvention. The melodies remain recognizable, but the performances are allowed to breathe. Harmonic colors shift, rhythmic ideas emerge and the two musicians follow one another wherever the music leads.
Even their method of selecting repertoire is deeply personal.
There is no elaborate research process required to locate material. Much of it is already stored in memory.
Zenón might remember a particular song from listening to it with his parents. Perdomo might recall another tune and a recording by a favorite artist. Those memories become the starting point for the duo’s arrangements.
“It's not like we have to look very far,” Zenón says. “We draw from our own experiences.”
That makes the project feel less like an attempt to define a definitive bolero repertoire and more like two musicians gradually assembling their own personal Latin American Songbook.
The series itself has an equally organic origin.
The first El Arte del Bolero was created quickly during the COVID-19 pandemic, when musicians around the world were looking for ways to perform for audiences while concert halls remained closed. Zenón and Perdomo responded to the need for a livestream performance, creating a duo program that eventually became an album released January 8, 2021.
What began as a response to an extraordinary moment proved to have a life of its own.
El Arte del Bolero, Volume 2 followed in 2023 and went on to win the 2024 Grammy for Best Latin Jazz Album. The recognition confirmed what listeners had already discovered in the first volume: there was something unusually powerful about hearing two master musicians strip the arrangements down to their essentials and allow the songs to speak through improvisation.
With Volume 3, the project has officially become a series — and one that shows no indication of exhausting its possibilities.
Zenón arrives at the album as one of the most accomplished and influential saxophonists and composers of his generation. A Grammy Award winner and recipient of both a Guggenheim Fellowship and MacArthur Fellowship, he has released 19 albums over 25 years as a bandleader while collaborating with artists and ensembles including Charlie Haden, Fred Hersch, Kenny Werner, David Sánchez, Danilo Pérez, Bobby Hutcherson, the Mingus Big Band and the SFJAZZ Collective.
His work extends beyond performance. As a composer, he has received commissions from organizations and ensembles including NYO Jazz, Chamber Music America, the Logan Center for the Arts, MIT, Spektral Quartet, Miller Theatre, PRISM Quartet and Kinetic Ensemble. He has also spent years teaching, lecturing and giving master classes around the world and serves as an Associate Professor in the Music & Theater Arts Section at MIT.
Perdomo brings an equally deep résumé to the collaboration. The Grammy Award-winning Venezuelan pianist has released nine recordings as a leader and appeared on more than 250 albums as a sideman. His extensive performing history includes collaborations with Ravi Coltrane, Jerry Bergonzi, Tom Harrell, Brian Lynch, Ray Barretto, Henry Threadgill, David Sánchez, The Cookers, George Garzone and the Vanguard Orchestra, among many others.
A founding member of the Miguel Zenón Quartet, Perdomo has also shared three duo projects with Zenón: the original El Arte del Bolero, which received Grammy and Latin Grammy nominations in 2022; the Grammy-winning El Arte del Bolero, Vol. 2; and now El Arte del Bolero, Vol. 3.
Yet the impressive résumés of both musicians are almost beside the point when the two sit down together.
What matters is the sound of their shared history.
There is a particular intimacy in hearing only saxophone and piano tackle music so deeply associated with voice, romance and memory. Without a rhythm section to provide a predetermined pulse, Zenón and Perdomo have the freedom to shape time themselves. A melody can linger, a harmony can open unexpectedly, and a familiar phrase can become something entirely new.
That combination of technical mastery and emotional familiarity is what makes the El Arte del Bolero series so compelling.
The bolero has survived because its themes are universal. Love, absence, desire, regret and remembrance do not belong to any particular generation. Zenón and Perdomo understand that, but they also understand that these songs carry specific memories for the people who grew up with them.
Their task is not to modernize the music simply for the sake of modernity. It is to listen closely enough to discover what is still alive inside it.
With El Arte del Bolero, Volume 3, they continue that conversation — between past and present, Puerto Rico and Venezuela, composition and improvisation, memory and discovery.
The result is a project that demonstrates how tradition can remain vital without losing its identity. These are songs that have traveled across borders and generations, now being heard through the voices of two musicians who have spent decades developing the language needed to let them breathe.
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