Familiarly known as Maelo, he’s a popular hero in Puerto Rico today, even more than 30 years after his death. For his twelfth album as a leader, Zenón and his quartet offer a tribute to a musician who influenced him from childhood: Ismael Rivera, who grew up in Santurce, not far from Zenón’s home turf.

Sonero might be Miguel Zenón’s strongest album yet, and that’s saying a lot. No one else’s Puerto Rico – and no one else’s jazz – sounds like Miguel Zenón’s. His great subject is his homeland of Puerto Rico, and he brings a fresh take on it every time out, combining reverence for cultural tradition with strong compositional chops. He’s one of jazz’s most original thinkers, known for his harmonic complexity as well as for being one of the most recognizable alto saxophonists of his generation. Zenón knows something about musical greatness. He was like Bird, Mozart, Einstein, Ali – he was that guy.” “He exemplified the highest level of artistry. For me, he was beyond that,” says Miguel Zenón about Ismael (“Maelo”) Rivera (1931-1987), the subject of his latest project, Sonero: The Music of Ismael Rivera.

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