– Preston Frazier 

I’m speaking with Miguel Zenon regarding his new album, his first live album with his quartet called ‘Vanguardia Subterranea’ .

Miguel, how are you?

– Miguel Zenon

I’m doing great. Thank you for having me. It’s really a pleasure to get to talk.

– Preston Frazier 

 How did this band come about?

When did you meet the players?

– Miguel Zenon

The band is me, of course, Luis Perdomo on the piano, Hans Klovichnik plays bass, and Henry Caller plays drums.

I met Hans first, in 1998. We were playing in some bands together then, and through Hans met Luis.

They had been schoolmates, classmates at Manhattan School of Music, so I met Luis through Hans, but I already knew about Luis through his time playing with other bands and stuff.

I really admired his playing. We initially started having really informal jam sessions at Hans’s apartment on the Upper West Side, featuring various drummers, Dan Wiess, and other guests.

Eventually, Antonio Sanchez, a classmate of mine from Berklee, started playing in some of the sessions, and I began writing music specifically for that band.

The first couple of albums we made were with Antonio on drums. When Antonio started working with Pat Metheny and got a little busy, that’s when Henry came onto the horizon and just kind of fit the band perfectly.

So Henry joined in 2005. I knew Henry from Puerto Rico. We’ve been playing since then, so it’s been 20 years.

– Preston Frazier 

Why a live album at this stage in your career? 

 – Miguel Zenon

It’s something that we’ve been thinking about for a while. We’ve made a bunch of studio albums, and we’ve played at the Vanguard quite a few times.

We have been thinking about it for a while. There are certain things about making a live album.

Obviously, there are many challenges about making a live album in terms of capturing the music, capturing the energy, and making sure that the quality of all it takes is going to be cool.

Usually, the tracks are going to be longer. So that’s something to consider. So there’s much thought that went into it.

Once I started thinking about it, and when we had a run at the Vanguard a couple of years ago, I thought we should maybe next time we come in, that would be a good time to finally put something together and plan it out in advance and produce it well so that we can make a live album that still captures the band’s energy and what we usually do, but also features all new music that we haven’t recorded.

So we prepare for it that way.

 – Preston Frazier 

 It’s all new music except for two songs. That’s not usually what some artists will do, covers in their live sets and their live recordings, but you came up with some fantastic new songs.

Did you start writing these songs for the live album, or were they written for another project? 

– Miguel Zenon

They definitely were written for the album. My approach is usually writing music for, specifically for the projects, and that tends to work well for me, so I started writing music thinking about this album, probably about two years ago, so about a year before we actually recorded the music, I started working on the music, trying to come up with some ideas so that we would have time to play it over a period of time, before we went into, into the vanguard to record it so that it would be be familiar for the players, the musicians.

Some original music and some things that are specifically connected to what we do as a band, and there’s a piece that the club inspires, or the piece that’s inspired by other things.

I also had this idea of including a couple of covers, like you mentioned, you know, I’m from, as you know, I’m from Puerto Rico originally, I grew up around a lot of this music that’s connected to the Caribbean or a lot of dance music like salsa and things like that.

And we’ve been exploring that music from our perspective for a few years now. And it’d be a good balance to include a couple of those things in the program, along with some of the original pieces.

– Preston Frazier 

.  I listened to “El Dia de Mi Suerte” by  Willie Colon and was blown away by the arrangement of that song.

 – Miguel Zenon

I started playing music when I was about 11 years old, initially only classical saxophone.

Eventually, when I was about 14, my first experiences as a professional musician involved playing dance music, mainly salsa.

I was exposed to music early, not only during that period, but also at an earlier age. This is music from the time of my parents and the 1970s and 1980s.

It had a huge impact on me early on. I remember listening to it and appreciating the way they approached the music in such a free and fun way.

The music was so well-developed and progressive, with numerous details, that it holds a truly special place in my development and in my heart as a musician and an artist.

I knew I wanted to do something by Willie Colon and Hector Laveau.

It took me a while to decide because there were so many songs that I liked, and it took me a while until I finally figured, ‘Okay, so this might be a good vehicle.’ After all, I had an idea for what I wanted to do with the arrangement, and I thought it would fit well with the set of music that we were putting together.

– Preston Frazier 

Oh, yeah, it’s, it’s, it’s terrific. And the arrangement that you and your band put together, the quartet put together is fantastic.

Talk about that song in particular. Have you been playing it live much? Yeah, yeah.

 – Miguel Zenon

We’ve definitely played live a few times before the Vanguard. And of course, after we played many, many gigs, we made the recording.

So we played live a bunch.  The interesting thing about covers, as you know, especially if you’re dealing with popular music, in some parts of the world, this music is extremely popular.

Folks would recognize it right away. Okay. And the thing about playing this kind of covers and dealing with popular music is that, you know, for some people, it connects to a certain level of nostalgia, as you could imagine, you know, like it really means something to them to hear this, to hear a piece of music that, you know, they grew up with, or they had experiences, you know, going to the dance club or meeting someone through the music or playing it.

So it’s actually really powerful to get to play it.  It has an effect, even if you don’t know the music, but if you know it, or if you’re semi-familiar with it, or even if you hear it one time, what the original sounds like, then you hear the arrangement, and it has a special meaning to it.

So it’s been really fun to get to experience that, the reaction of folks who really know the piece really well, or folks who know it kind of, and it’s always kind of a treat for me to see that moment when they recognize the piece, when they go, oh, this is what that is.

You know, and then everything, their mind is going like, you know, wow, nostalgia, nostalgia, connecting the dots. And it’s, it’s, it’s special.

 – Preston Frazier 

It is special.  What really draws my attention is how you and the rest of the band can make it your own.

Especially, Henry Cole, who has a lot to fill in because there’s so much percussion on the original, but it sounds so wonderful.

It doesn’t even attempt to copy the original, but you can find the core of the original there.

 – Miguel Zenon

In the case of Henry, in the case of Louise, and even in the case of Hans, it’s a very similar experience.

They all have a connection to the music. And when I bring something like this in, I don’t really have to give them many instructions, basically. They already have some idea where the music is coming from.

They know the original. They know what we’re looking for. We’re not trying to replicate the feeling of the original.

We’re really trying to use the elements to create something of our own.

 – Preston Frazier 

The other cover is “Perdoname”.

– Miguel Zenon

“Perdoname” is a piece that I grew up with.  I grew up listening to it through my family and hearing it on the radio.

“Perdóname,” this piece by Gilberto Santa Rosa, was a significant hit.

Not only in Puerto Rico, but also in all of Latin America and places where people love this kind of music.

When I was thinking about covers, I thought about Willie’s piece, and it would be cool to cover something that I connect with, of course, on a personal level, experienced growing up.

It took me a while to pick the song, because I was like, yeah, I could do this with this song, this other thing with this song, but eventually ended up with this one, which I think was a good fit with the program and with the rest of the material that we had.

 –Preston Frazier 

Let’s discuss “Dale La Vuelta”. 

– Miguel Zenon

“Dale La Vuelta “ means ‘turn it around’.

One of the things that I like to do is create a little game when I’m composing. 

It revolves around rhythmic exercises. They’re numerical exercises where you start dealing with math and cycles and putting a number against another one and seeing what comes on the other side, and those kinds of things.

This piece is one of those that started as an exercise where I was experimenting with a couple of different subdivisions and rhythmic zones or dimensions.

You could think about them in different ways that would be paired together, and then one would kind of take over and be more powerful, and the other one would kind of take over, kind of like that.

That’s something that I like to play around with a lot. 

I ended up with this piece that once the exercise started coming into fruition and turning into actual music, it took a little time to refine it and turn it into something that felt cool for the band and could be something that

That could match the set. This way of writing music is something that I really enjoy. This systematic approach, where we just put it in the pot and see what happens.

– Preston Frazier 

What is your tool for composition? 

 – Miguel Zenon

The first step always varies,  sometimes as a melody, harmony, or some kind of rhythmic idea.

What is consistent for me is that I usually go into the process already with a couple of elements in hand.

I’ll capture ideas over time, either in a notebook that I carry with me or in a voice memo, and record them as they come.

I’ll have a couple of things to work with. Then, when I sit down and write the piece, I already have a rough idea of what the main elements in the piece are going to be.

I mainly write at the piano. Putting my ideas together, I use digital workstations, like Logic or Finale notation software, because with that, I can get playback, and I can get a feel for what it’s going to sound like.

A lot of the music that I write is long in structure, it’s episodic, it’s like long forms, and that’s something that I really enjoy.

It’s crucial for me to be sort of like constantly on top of the narrative of the piece, okay, this is going into this, how does this feel, do we need another transition, is this transition working, how do we finish, how do we end, what’s the pacing of the piece, etc.

– Preston Frazier 

Has the process changed in terms of how you’re developing your work over the last 20 years?

– Miguel Zenon

The process has been similar over the past couple of decades, for sure. What’s changed is that I’ve just become more comfortable with the process.

So it becomes more of a routine. Initially, I was still discovering and finding my place through the process. So if the process was slower. I would run myself into a wall once in a while or end up finishing something that I didn’t really like.

Now I feel like I can see my way through the process in a clearer way, and I’ve just gotten more used to it.

For the most part, it’s a solitary process. I work on it myself, and once the piece is finished, I’ll send the band all the music in advance, of course, and I’ll send them some audio reference so they kind of get a feel for what the piece sounds like that I’ve put together on software.

When I write the music, of course, in this case, I’m writing it for them in mind, I know how they play, of course.

I have a clear idea of what their approach is going to be.  I’m not really big on giving them a lot of instructions or many prompts.

Of course, all of that is theory until we play it in person. Because we all work on the music on our own and, work on our parts, and put in all the individual work.

When we play it in person, that’s when we start, okay, so this is how this works.

This aligns with this other thing. Or once in a while, Hans might say, ‘This line is going to sound better if I play it in this register’.

Or Luis might say, ‘Maybe instead of playing this voicing, I’m going to play this other one because it fits better with the melody you’re playing’.

Same with Henry. We’ll tweak it based on what they’re doing on the instrument. But that will happen once we start rehearsing the piece.

– Preston Frazier 

The title track, “Vanguardia Subterranea”. Tell me about that.

– Miguel Zenon

“Vanguardia Subterranea” means subterranean vanguard or underground vanguard. It’s an allusion to the club, of course, the Village Vanguard.

A lot of times, something that helps me when putting projects together is to have something really concrete that I can work off of.

And in this case, I wanted to write a song inspired by the club, not just the club, but all the amazing recordings that have been made there that have been so inspiring to so many of us musicians and jazz lovers.

A lot of times when I’m writing things, I write songs with lyrics, like little poems or little songs.

The kind of guide for the melodic material. I sat down and wrote a couple of verses with this

melodic material that went along with the verses.

Those verses you will never hear, and no one will hear them, because they will never be sung. But I wrote those verses just as a way of guiding the melody.

The verses were really about the club, the inspiration that it brought us, all the amazing music that’s been made there.

It eventually evolved into this piece, which features several distinct sections that start as this sort of disjointed rubato thing over a drum groove.

Then the drum groove kind of takes over and becomes more of a groove thing. Then the melody comes back sort of as an afterthought at the end.

That’s the idea for the piece. But I was really just trying to write something inspired by the club, inspired by the history and the legacy of the club.

Just as a way of tipping our hats to this amazing opportunity to make music there.

– Preston Frazier 

Is there any other unreleased material?

 – Miguel Zenon

We recorded two nights, totaling four sets.

Each set was what you hear on the album, same order, same pieces.  We played in the same order.

Each set was the same length as the album. And we did four sets of that. We have four takes of every piece, but each take is from a different set. The album ended up being a combination of all the sets we had.

No, although other nights were not recorded within the week that we played other music that ended up making it in the album.

 We’re going to be at the Vanguard for sure for a CD release. We start on the 17th of September and play there for a week.

Pretty much right away after the album comes out, we start hitting the road playing a couple of different venues.

I think we start, I believe we start in Texas. We play Austin. Let me see. We play Austin on the 11th, then Houston on the 12th and 13th.

Then we do the Vanguard the week after. Then we do Cincinnati on the 24th, then Chicago, from the 25th to the 28th.

We’re trying to get the music out there and get everyone to, as much as possible, hear what this music is about.

We’ll have the CD available at the venue. We’ll have vinyl available at the venues as well, and also on the website.

 Thank you for the opportunity, thank you for your time, and say hello to everyone that’s listening.