Black Rock - Center for the arts

Miguel Zenón RESCHEDULED

ATTENTION TICKETHOLDERS! BECAUSE OF THE BLIZZARD CONDITIONS WE ARE POSTPONING MIGUEL ZENON'S PERFORMANCE ON FRIDAY FEBRUARY 12. LOOK FOR UPDATES SOON.

Thursday, June 03, 2010 8:00 PM
$30 and $35 (advance); $35 and $40 (door) BUY TICKETS

The last time we saw Miguel Zenón he was on the television screen, serving as sideman in the December musical tribute to Kennedy Center Honoree Dave Brubeck. Now Zenón’s touring with his band – pianist Luis Perdomo, bassist Hans Glawischnig, drummer Henry Coles, lead vocalist/percussionist Hector “Tito” Matos, and Juan Guitierrez and Obanilu Allende on vocals and percussion -- on the heels of Esta Plena, his latest CD, which was recently nominated for two Grammy Awards. Named for plena, the Afro-Caribbean musical tradition New York-based Zenón enjoys when visiting family in his native Puerto Rico, the album is the culmination of an ethnomusicological research project/science report that brought the musician back to his roots on a fact-finding mission financed by a research grant from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation. (Zenón is also the recipient of the coveted MacArthur Foundation’s “Genius Grant.”) “This is plena music reinterpreted,” Zenón says – and indeed, he has taken the folk traditions of the coastal regions of Puerto Rico and updated them using the jazz that captivated him as a teenager. Plena, he says, is “a by-product of Spanish Colonization, combining African rhythmic syncopations with European harmonies and melodic cadences.”
Jazz Series