Vanguardia Subterránea: Live at the Village Vanguard (Miel Music, 2025) is alto saxophonist-composer Miguel Zenón’s first live album with his quartet and eighteenth overall. Its eight tracks were recorded over two nights in September 2024 at the hallowed jazz shrine in Greenwich Village. Zenon employs his longstanding quartet of pianist Luis Perdomo, bassist Hans Glawischnig, and drummer Henry Cole. Despite this quartet having played the venue five times, this is the first time it recorded there, in celebration of the quartet’s twentieth anniversary. This background gives  their live album, as expressed by Zenón, “an energy that‘s really different than all our other records.”  

The album features all-new material, six originals, and creative arrangements of Willie Colón and Héctor Lavoe’s “El Dia de Mi Suerte” and Gilberto Santa Rosa’s “Perdóname.” The opener, “Abre Cuto Güiri Mambo,” is titled after a phrase that in first-generation African Spanish means “open up your ears and hear the mambo.” Zenón is well schooled in all forms of Afro-Caribbean music. In this case, that particular phrase is associated with bandleader Arsenio Rodriguez, a pioneer of Havana dance music who made his mark by layering horns over drums. Zenón proudly displays his Puerto Rican heritage and salsa upbringing on “El Dia de Mi Suerte,’ where he truly puts his own New York jazz sheen to the tune with his fluid, expressive alto through a series of start-stop rhythms before yielding to the vibrant Perdomo. The original theme repeats several times in the final few choruses to let the audience distinctly know the music’s origins. 

“Vita” reveals the saxophonist’s lyrical gifts in a piece that began as a private song for his now ninety-five-year-old grandmother, who has the original score framed in her home. His arrangement for the quartet is infused with a chacarera-style rhythm, with bassist Glawischnig making a potent contribution. “Dale la Vuelta,” which translates to “Turn it Around,” comes from a game or an exercise in rhythm counterpoint. The space is divided into two different zones as the quartet shifts back and forth. It deceptively begins as a ballad and then gets rollicking before pausing into the next section, and so it flows. Only the tightest of quartets can navigate this so deftly. They drive this one hard! 

“Coordenadas” is a unique brainchild of Zenón. He looked up the geographical coordinates for the Village Vanguard and the birthplaces of each band member: he and Cole from towns in Puerto Rico, Perdomo from Caracas, Venezuela, and Glawischnig from Graz, Austria. He then encoded the numerical coordinates into pitches, massaged the results, and allowed each musician to solo as if they were at home. The album’s title track is a melodic poem based on a continuous straight-up groove but infused with a different rhythm element that initially sounds out of place but ultimately locks in. The audience’s reaction to this one rattles those walls. There’s no judicious choice other than to tamp it down next, which they do with “Bendición,” a lyrical standout for Zenón’s mother and other elders, as the term is customary in Latin countries. Perdomo is all over the keys in his rambling, percussive solo, delivering a master class in both rhythm and dynamics.  

The great improvising salsa singer Gilberto Santa Rosa had a huge hit with Jorge Luis Piloto’s “Perdóname.” Vanguardia Subterránea’s rendition references Santa Rosa’s most famous version, the live performance at Carnegie Hall in 1995. It’s another uncanny move that is a testament to Zenón’s vision; playing a song with lyrics purely instrumentally, with hefty doses of improvisation, the salsa motif revealing itself at several points throughout.  

Miguel Zenón has long been recognized among the most technically skilled and expressive of players. No further proof is needed at this point in his storied career. But Vanguardia Subterránea boasts a vibrant energy that enhances his catalog. Not only that, you’ll rarely hear a quartet as tight as this one.

‘Vanguardia Subterránea’ is out now. It can be purchased on Bandcamp.

Photo credit: Sylvain Gripoix