Miguel Zenón (born December 30, 1976) is a Puerto Rican alto saxophonist, composer, band leader, music producer, and educator. He is a multiple Grammy Award nominee, and the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and a MacArthur Fellowship. He also holds an Honorary Doctorate Degree in the Arts from Universidad del Sagrado Corazón. Zenón has released many albums as a band leader and appeared on over 100 recordings as a sideman.
Early life
Born in San Juan, Puerto Rico, Zenón was raised in Residencial Luis Llorens Torres, the largest housing project in the Island. Although he didn't grow up in a family of musicians, he was nevertheless exposed to various styles of music from a very early age. At age 10 he received his first lessons on music theory and solfeggio from Ernesto Vigoreaux, an elderly gentleman who traveled from the adjacent neighborhood of Villa Palmeras to Llorens Torres every day in order to work with disadvantaged youth in the community. Zenón would eventually be admitted to Escuela Libre de Música, a performing arts middle school and high school where he was trained for six years on classical saxophone by Angel Marrero. On the 11th grade he was exposed to jazz music by some of his friends at the school and became very interested in the concept of improvisation and on the music of jazz saxophonist Charlie Parker. Although he had always shown interest in the natural sciences, he declined an engineering scholarship from the Recinto Universitario de Mayagüez (the foremost engineering institution in the Island) and decided to pursue a career in music. After a year and a half worth of efforts to gather enough funds in scholarships and financial aid, Zenón moved to Boston in the spring of 1996 to begin his studies at Berklee College of Music.
Education and session work
At Berklee, Zenón's classmates included Antonio Sánchez, Anat Cohen, Avishai Cohen, Jaleel Shaw, and Jeremy Pelt. During his time in Boston, he was heavily influenced by Bill Pierce, Ed Tomassi, and Hal Crook. It was also during this time that he met Panamanian pianist Danilo Pérez, who would become a mentor and collaborator. After graduating from Berklee in 1996, Zenón attended Manhattan School of Music, where he studied with Dick Oatts, Nils Vigeland and Ludmila Ulehla and received a master's degree in Performance in 2001 before settling in New York City. As a sideman, he has worked with SFJAZZ Collective, Charlie Haden, Fred Hersch, Kenny Werner, Guillermo Klein & Los Guachos, David Sánchez, Danilo Pérez, The Vanguard Jazz Orchestra, Kurt Elling, The Mingus Big Band, Ray Barreto, Jerry González & The Fort Apache Band, Jeff Ballard Trio, Miles Okazaki, Dan Weiss, Dan Tepfer, Bobby Hutcherson, Steve Coleman, Andy Montañez, Brian Lynch, Antonio Sánchez, Joey Calderazzo and Paoli Mejías.
As leader
The Miguel Zenón Quartet
In 1999 Zenón started getting together with Mexican drummer Antonio Sánchez (who he met at Berklee College of Music), Austrian bassist Hans Glawischnig (Zenón's bandmate in the David Sanchez Group) and Venezuelan pianist Luis Perdomo (a classmate of Glawischnig's at The Manhattan School of Music). They would meet for informal rehearsal sessions at Glawischnig's apartment in New York's Upper West Side and play through some of Zenón's early compositions. The group, which would eventually become the Miguel Zenón Quartet, soon started performing at various venues in the city, such as the C Note and The Jazz Gallery. In 2005 Sanchez began working regularly with The Pat Metheny Group, and was replaced in the Quartet by Puerto Rican drummer Henry Cole, for what has become the longest running version of the ensemble.