It feels really great to say that in Miguel Zenon the alto saxophone has found a strong and vital new voice capable of both understanding and honoring the instrument’s tradition in jazz music and expanding upon that tradition. For quite a few years there has been a predominance of young tenor saxophonists with only a few alto voices coming along. Zenon changes all of that, and manages to create a really unique-sounding jazz album as well.

Jibaro are a specific song style from Zenon’s native Puerto Rico. Zenon has taken some of the rhythmic and stylistic characteristics of this song style and created new jazz compositions with them. The result comes off as jazz with certain folk music-sounding elements but it seems resoundingly jazz rather than any kind of Latin jazz hybrid listeners are used to hearing. Zenon’s accomplices are more than up to the task of helping him reinvent both Latin jazz and jibaro. They include Luis Perdomo (piano), Hans Glawischnig (bass), and Antonio Sanchez (drums). The group supports Zenon beautifully, providing forward motion when needed, while at other times laying the groundwork for Zenon’s well-structured solos. Zenon is an accomplished saxophonist who has absorbed the influence not only of the great jazz players but also of Cuban and Latin American musicians and music. He is able to play technically difficult lines that spiral upward and upward, but he never loses sight of the structure of the piece and he never becomes so absorbed in what he is playing that he forgets to take the listener with him.

Particularly beautiful is the second track, “Fajardeno,” which allows Zenon to play pretty alto while at the same time refusing to settle down into a somnambulant performance. Zenon is a very melodic player who refuses to sacrifice energy or melody, believing that the two can coexist, just as Latin and jazz-influenced music can coexist without becoming a fusion or requiring one style to acquiesce to the other. Many listeners who would be unable to state Zenon’s particular influences or explain what is happening in his music would still find this music compelling and exciting. That’s because he neither condescends to the audience nor goes off into the stratosphere, leaving the majority of listeners behind. It’s an incredible balancing act, and one that more and more young musicians will probably be faced with as they deal with a musical environment in which increasingly sophisticated listeners want to hear music that grows organically out of a fertile, multi-cultural environment rather than one in which exotic musical styles are merely grafted onto a familiar popular Western style.

Just as Brazil has had its choros, sambas, and bossa styles, each with its own group of innovators, so jibaro has found its unique contemporary voice in Miguel Zenon. Jibaro is likely to appear on some Best of 2005 lists, and listeners who enjoy their jazz with Latin influences or who want to hear one of the best young alto saxophonists around will need to pick up this extraordinary CD.