A Conversation with Miguel Zenón & Luis Perdomo

Arts + Literature Laboratory and Wisconsin Union Theater have put together another outstanding series of events for the Madison Jazz Festival. The big draw is the final weekend at the fest’s traditional Memorial Union home, with music all day on the Terrace; ticketed evening shows in Shannon Hall are by saxophonist Lakecia Benjamin & Phoenix (June 17) and 20 Feet From Stardom star Lisa Fischer joining Ranky Tanky (June 18). But be sure to explore the week of events leading up to the Union shows, including Miguel Zenón and Luis Perdomo (7 p.m., June 13, ALL), Rick Flowers and Amalgam X (6 p.m., June 14, Penn Park), and a concert celebrating the release of Jamie Breiwick's second album revisiting the music of Don Cherry (7 p.m., June 15, ALL). Find the full schedule below and tickets at madisonjazzfestivalwi.org.

media release: Join us for an exclusive conversation and Q&A with saxophonist Miguel Zenón and pianist Luis Perdomo at 10:30am on Tuesday, June 13, 2023, at St. Joseph Church (Good Shepherd Parish) on the Beltline. This event is free and open to the public.et.

Zenón and Perdomo will perform their Grammy and Latin Grammy-nominated project El Arte del Bolero Tuesday evening at Arts + Literature Laboratory.

This program is supported by the Arts Midwest GIG Fund, a program of Arts Midwest that is funded by the National Endowment for the Arts, with additional funds from the Wisconsin Arts Board.

About Miguel Zenón

Multiple Grammy Nominee and Guggenheim and MacArthur Fellow Miguel Zenón represents a select group of musicians who have masterfully balanced and blended the often contradictory poles of innovation and tradition. Widely considered as one of the most groundbreaking and influential saxophonists and composers of his generation, he has also developed a unique voice as a conceptualist, concentrating his efforts on perfecting a fine mix between Jazz and his many musical influences.

Born and raised in San Juan, Puerto Rico, Zenón has built a distinguished career as a leader, releasing fifteen albums under his own name. In addition, he has crafted his artistic identity by dividing his time equally between working with older jazz masters and the music’s younger innovators –irrespective of styles and genres. The list of musicians Zenón has toured and/or recorded with includes The SFJAZZ Collective, Charlie Haden, Fred Hersch, Kenny Werner, David Sánchez, Danilo Perez, The Village Vanguard Orchestra, Kurt Elling, Guillermo Klein & Los Guachos, The Jeff Ballard Trio, Antonio Sanchez, Brian Lynch, Joey Calderazzo, Steve Coleman, Ray Barreto, Andy Montañez, Jerry Gonzalez & The Fort Apache Band, The Mingus Big Band and Bobby Hutcherson.

As a composer he has been commissioned by SFJAZZ, NYO Jazz, The New York State Council for the Arts, Chamber Music America, Logan Center for The Arts, The Hyde Park Jazz Festival, The John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, MIT, Spektral Quartet, The Hewlett Foundation, Peak Performances, PRISM Quartet and many of his peers.

Zenón has been featured in articles on publications such as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Tribune, Revista Milenio, Bloomberg Pursuits, Jazz Times, Jazziz, Boston Globe, Billboard, Jazz Inside, Newsday and Details. In addition he topped both the Jazz Artist of the Year and Alto Saxophonist of the Year categories on the 2014 Jazz Times Critics Poll and was selected as the Alto Saxophonist of the Year by the Jazz Journalist Association in 2015, 2018, 2019 and 2020 (when he was also recognized as Arranger of The Year).

Zenón has given hundreds of lectures and master classes and has taught all over the world, at institutions which include The Banff Centre, Berklee College of Music, Siena Jazz, Universidad Veracruzana, Conservatorium Van Amsterdam, Musik Akademie Basel, Conservatoire de Paris, Georgia State University, Conservatorio de Música de Puerto Rico, San Francisco Conservatory of Music, Columbia University, Princeton University, The Kimmel Center, UMass-Amherst and UCLA. He is also a permanent faculty member at New England Conservatory and The Manhattan School of Music. But perhaps what best reflects his commitment to education and cements his growing reputation as a “cultural ambassador”, is a program that he founded in 2011, called Caravana Cultural. 

In April 2008 Zenón received a fellowship from the prestigious John Simon Guggenheim Foundation. Later that year he was one of 25 distinguished individuals chosen to receive the coveted MacArthur Fellowship, also known as the “Genius Grant”. In 2022 he received an Honorary Doctorate from La Universidad del Sagrado Corazón in San Juan, Puerto Rico, the highest honor bestowed by the institution.

About Luis Perdomo

There are moments in music when an artist illuminates the scene with imagination, virtuosity and above all, an undying dedication to swing.

Pianist/composer/bandleader Luis Perdomo is that moment!

Ever since he came to New York in 1993 from Venezuela, Perdomo has emerged as one of the most in-demand sidemen – as evidenced by his celebrated work with a wide array of jazz and Latin stars – from Ravi Coltrane to Ray Barretto, and by his six critically- acclaimed recordings as a leader. The release of his magnificent new, Hot Tone label debut CD, 22, features bassist Mimi Jones’ supple, deep basslines and drummer Rudy Royston’s quicksilver rhythms, in a trio he christened The Controlling Ear Unit. “I wanted to create an environment where a sensitive player could make his own musical choices, without fear of the consequences,” Perdomo says. “The word ‘unit’ is appropriate because although the current group is a trio, it doesn’t really have to be restrained to that. It could have a different format, depending on what the music calls for.”

On 22, save for his elegant rendition of the Bees Gees’ classic ballad “How Deep is Your Love,” Perdomo delivers a stunning set of original compositions, mostly inspired by his adopted and native hometowns, and that mysterious number.

“2015 marks my twenty-second year living in New York City, and I left my hometown when I was twenty-two years old,” he says. “I remembered the exact moment when I moved, and the feelings I had had at the time...especially during the last two days in Caracas and the first two days in New York City. There again, I saw the two and two formula, and realized that there was a little recurring theme there. So I began scoring all of those memories and trying to convey them through music: translating some dates that were very significant to me into notes.”

Perdomo’s lyrical and logical pianism embodies Bud Powell’s bop-at-the-speed-of- swing, Oscar Peterson’s technical brilliance, and Ahmad Jamal’s melodic genius. And his numbers-into-notes compositional technique, which he learned from Richard DeRosa, an instructor from his Alma Mater, the Manhattan School of Music, forms the basis of two songs: “Cota Mil” a funky, labyrinthine, Patanemo-grooved number named after a prominent highway north of Caracas, which derives its compositional motifs from the dates of the Venezuelan Battle of Independence in 1821 and the Batalla de la Juventud/Battle of the Youth in 1814. The martial, “Days Gone Days Ahead,” was inspired by the day Perdomo got his US Student Visa on 8/13/93.

The rest of the CD’s tracks showcase the infinite variety of Perdomo’s musicality. “Love Tone Poem” is a wistful, 5/4-metered ballad dedicated to Jones, and “Two Sides of a Goodbye” is a funereal, avant-garde work that conjures up Perdomo’s melancholy when he left his family at the airport in Venezuela. In contrast, “Old City” is an uptempo sound portrait of an the un-gentrified Manhattan of the early nineties, where jazz clubs like Bradley’s, The Village Gate, Fat Tuesday’s and Sweet Basil’s reigned supreme. Perdomo’s evocative sound on the Fender Rhodes is also featured on the bouncy backbeat of “A Different Kind of Reality,” the contrapuntal “Light Slips In,” “Brand New Grays,” and the funkified “Looking Through You.”

Two tracks, “Weilheim (to Gerry Weil)” a reverent mid-tempo piece dedicated to Perdomo’s first teacher, the Austrian-born jazz pianist/educator Gerry Weil, and “Aaychdee (to Harold Danko)” – named after jazz Danko’s publishing company,” are Perdomo’s sonic shout-outs to his former piano teachers. “The biggest lesson I received from Gerry Weil in Venezuela, was to keep my mind open to all types of music,” he says. “With Harold (who was his instructor at MSM), that was the first time I actually heard jazz from an American point-of-view. That was a total revelation to me.”

Born in 1971 in Caracas, Perdomo, from the age of 12, was playing on Venezuelan TV and radio stations, but he eventually realized that he would have to travel to New York City to fulfill his musical destiny. “Being in a more competitive and challenging environment was a big change that I welcomed,” he says.

In 1993, Perdomo relocated to New York and enrolled with a full scholarship to the Manhattan School of Music, where he studied with Harold Danko and classical pianist Martha Pestalozzi, and earned his earned his BA Degree in 1997. Perdomo later studied with pianist extraordinaire, Sir Roland Hanna at Queens College, and received his Masters Degree in 2000. "Studying with Sir Roland Hanna ...“I began to look at jazz and classical music in a new and more in-depth way and my playing evolved accordingly,” he says. Perdomo has appeared on over two hundred records, and has become a first-class sideman to artists like Dave Douglas, David Sanchez, Tom Harrell, Steve Turre, Ben Wolfe, Ray Barretto, Brian Lynch, David Gilmore, Conrad Herwig, Ignacio Berroa, Ralph Irizarry and Timbalaye and other great musicians. He was a member of Ravi Coltrane’s Quartet for ten years, and is a founding member of the Miguel Zenon Quartet. Perdomo recorded on three Grammy-nominated CD’s: Coltrane’s Influx, and Zenon’s Esta Plena, and Alma Adentro: The Puerto Rican Songbook.

Perdomo’s recordings as a leader include: Focus Point (2005), Awareness (2006), Pathways (2008), the critically-acclaimed Universal Mind (2012), with Jack DeJohnnette and Drew Gress, The Infancia Project (2012) and Links (2013). 

Find full schedule details at https://artlitlab.org/programs/greater-madison-jazz/madison-jazz-festival

June 8: Dayna Stephens Quartet at Cafe CODA, 7 pm

June 9: Mai Sugimoto Trio at Arts + Literature Laboratory, 7 pm

June 9: Michael Hackett Quintet at North Street Cabaret, 8 pm

June 10: "The Musical Legacy of Wayne Shorter" Talk by Dave Stoler at Sequoya Library, 10:30 am

June 10: Wayne Shorter Jam Session feat. Chris Greene at Cafe CODA, 1 pm

June 10: Wayne Shorter Tribute Concert at Cafe CODA, 8 pm

June 11: Janet Planet at Allen Centennial Garden, 5 pm

June 11: The Bad Plus + Marc Ribot at High Noon Saloon, 8 pm

June 12: Golpe Tierra at Warner Park, 6 pm

June 13: Miguel Zenon & Luis Perdomo in Conversation, St. Joseph Church (Good Shepherd Parish), 10:30 am

June 13: Miguel Zenon & Luis Perdomo: El Arte del Bolero at Arts + Literature Laboratory, 7 pm

June 14: DIG JAZZ: Rick Flowers and Amalgam X at Penn Park, 6 pm

June 15: Awake: Volume 2 - the Music of Don Cherry CD Release at Arts + Literature Laboratory, 7 pm

June 16: Marques Carroll Quintet at Cafe CODA, 8 pm

June 17: Jazz all day on the Memorial Union Terrace feat. Kassa Overall, 1-10:30 pm

June 17: A Conversation with Lakecia Benjamin, 3 pm

June 17: Lakecia Benjamin & Phoenix at Shannon Hall, 8 pm

June 18: Juneteenth Celebration of Black American Music on the Memorial Union Terrace, 2:30-9:30 pm

June 18: Ranky Tanky with Lisa Fischer at Shannon Hall, 8 pm