Miguel Zenón

Miguel Zenón (born December 30, 1976) is a Puerto Rican alto saxophonist, composer, band leader, music producer, and educator. He is a Grammy Award winner, the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a MacArthur Fellowship, and a Doris Duke Artist Award. 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.
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.
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.
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.
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, University of North Texas, Siena Jazz, Conservatorium Van Amsterdam, Musik Akademie Basel, Conservatoire de Paris, University of Manitoba, Manhattan School of Music, MIT, Conservatory of Music of Puerto Rico, Columbia University, Princeton University, Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts, San Francisco Conservatory of Music, Universidad Veracruzana, UMass- Amherst and The Brubeck Institute. In addition he served as the 2020-2022 Jazz Artist-in-Residence at the Zuckerman Institute at Columbia University. He is currently an Assistant Professor in the Music Department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the 2023-2024 Ken Pullig Visiting Scholar in Jazz Studies at Berklee College of Music. As a composer he has been commissioned by SFJAZZ, The New York State Council for the Arts, Chamber Music America, The John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, Hyde Park Jazz Festival, The Logan Center for the Arts, Miller Theatre, Jazz Reach, Peak Performances, PRISM Quartet, Spektral Quartet, Peak Performances, Carnegie Hall, MIT and many of his peers.
In 2011 Zenón founded Caravana Cultural, an initiative that organizes free-of-charge jazz concerts in rural areas of Puerto Rico. Each concert focuses on the music of a distinguished jazz figure (Charlie Parker, Miles Davis and Duke Ellington, among others) and is preceded by a presentation that touches on the basic elements of jazz and improvisation. The concert also incorporates young musicians from the community, who join the band on the last piece of the concert. Caravana Cultural, which is funded and produced by Zenón, looks to make a "social investment" in the island using jazz as a vehicle to advocate for cultural accessibility.
He won the 2024 Grammy Award for Best Latin Jazz Album with his recording El Arte del Bolero, Vol. 2. He also 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 Alto Saxophonist of the Year by the Jazz Journalists Association in 2015, 2018, 2019 and 2020 (when he was also recognized as Arranger of the Year). In 2023 he was recognized by the same organization as the Composer of the Year. Zenón is a twelve-time Grammy nominee and a seven-time Latin Grammy nominee. In 2008 he received a fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation (which resulted in his recording Esta Plena) and later that year also received a fellowship from the MacArthur Foundation. In 2022 he received an Honorary Doctorate in The Arts from Universidad del Sagrado Corazón in San Juan, Puerto Rico, the highest honor bestowed by the institution. The 2023 Puerto Rico Master Card Jazz Festival (formerly Heineken Jazz Festival) was dedicated to Zenón and his career, featuring his working band along with many special guests. In 2024 he received the Doris Duke Artist Award.
SFJAZZ Collective
The Liberation Music Orchestra
With Jonathan Suazo
With Raphael Pannier
With Gabriel Vicéns