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Miguel Zenón Quartet to Take Stage at Schaefer Center for the Performing Arts Tuesday, March 7

The quartet of acclaimed jazz saxophonist/composer Miguel Zenón will perform at 8 p.m. March 7 in support of “Típico,” their new album, in the Schaefer Center for the Performing Arts at Appalachian State University.

Miguel Zenón/Photo by Jimmy Katz

The concert is a presentation of Appalachian’s Hayes School of Music. Todd Wright, a professor who teaches courses on jazz and is the jazz area coordinator at Appalachian, helped arrange it. Tickets are $8 and $10. For tickets or information, call 800-841-2787 or visit http://appstate.edu/arts.

A multiple Grammy nominee, a Guggenheim Fellow and a MacArthur Fellow, Zenón is noted for masterfully blending innovation and tradition in his music. He has also made his mark as a composer, concentrating his efforts on mixing Latin American folkloric music and jazz.

“Típico,” which became available Feb. 10 on the Miel Music label, celebrates the Miguel Zenón Quartet, a longstanding ensemble that also includes Luis Perdomo on piano, Hans Glawischnig on double bass and Henry Cole on drums. Perdomo and Glawischnig have been with the Miguel Zenón Quartet since the turn of the millennium. Cole joined the band in 2005.

“I was thinking about what this band and the guys in the band mean to me as I was writing the music,” Zenón said in press materials. “I kept going back to this idea of us developing this common language that identifies us as a band.”

From left to right: Henry Cole, Miguel Zenón, Hans Glawischnig and Luis Perdomo/Photo by Jimmy Katz

That language has been developing during the years that Zenón has been playing with Perdomo, Glawischnig and Cole. It aspires to be thoroughly fluent, distinctive modern jazz, with all the instrumental prowess and rhythmic and harmonic complexity that implies.

“‘Típico’ refers to something that’s customary to a region or a group of people,” said Zenón, who was born and raised in Puerto Rico. “Or something that can be related to a specific group of people. And when I was writing the music, I was thinking about music that identified us and this band.”