Miguel Zenón: Yo Soy La Tradición

The GRAMMY® winning saxophonist and composer, Guggenheim and MacArthur Fellow Miguel Zenón returns to Houston for a special performance at the Hobby Center presented by Kinetic Ensemble and Aperio, Music of the Americas. In this one-night only event, Zenón joins Houston’s own Billboard Chart-topping Kinetic Ensemble for the premiere of a new version of Yo Soy La Tradición, a suite of eight songs for saxophone and string orchestra based upon his 2018 album of the same name. This evening-length work has been described as an “imaginative and heartfelt tour” of Zenón’s native Puerto Rico, which he originally recorded just two days after Hurricane Maria made its landfall on the island.

Each of the eight pieces showcases a different cultural tradition, ranging from Germán Rosario’s songwriting in the Jibaro tradition, which Zenón sets as a fugue, to the religious tradition of “La Promesa,” represented by a harmonic meditation of three, simultaneously-improvising cellists. As a whole, this captivating work “blurs lines between jazz, classical and Puerto Rican folk music.”