Jazz scene at Lesher Center is springing back to life

Miguel Zenon, Terence Blanchard will be at the Walnut Creek venue this week

Jazz saxophonist Miguel Zenon returns to the Bay Area for shows in Walnut Creek, San Francisco and Santa Cruz. COURTESY OF MIGUEL ZENON

Image

By Andrew Gilbert

Correspondent

The Bay Area jazz scene’s gradual return to pre-covid normalcy takes another significant step this week when two of the music’s most celebrated artists make their debuts at the Lesher Center.

In the decade before the pandemic, the Diablo Regional Arts Association brought an unusually well-curated jazz series to Walnut Creek, turning the Lesher Center into a destination for music fans far beyond Contra Costa.

As if making a triumphant statement about jazz’s return, trumpeter Terence Blanchard plays the Center tonight with his E-Collective, a volatile quintet featuring Berkeley-reared guitarist Charles Altura.

It’s true that Blanchard performances aren’t rarities in the region. Even before he took over as SFJAZZ’s executive artistic director last year he was a regular presence in the Bay Area.

But given his extraordinary creative output, composing scores for dozens of films and critically heralded operas like the groundbreaking Metropolitan Opera production “Fire Shut Up in My Bones” (the first opera by a Black composer in the company’s history), any chance to see Blanchard in action is an event.

“He’s one of the greatest musicians ever,” said Miguel Zenón, the brilliant Puerto Rican alto saxophonist who brings his long-running quartet to the Lesher Center on Friday.

Both he and Blanchard are featured as part of the Center’s series Headliners, a convergence that echoes previous encounters. They’ve never played together but their paths crossed occasionally during Zenón’s 15-year tenure as a founding member of the SFJAZZ Collective, 2004-2019.

Zenón also performs tonight at Santa Cruz’s Kuumbwa Jazz Center and Saturday at Keys Jazz Bistro in North Beach, but it was the Lesher Center date “that made the whole run a possibility,” he said.

With an anchor gig, he was able to take his band into Keys, a club owned and run by pianist Simon Rowe, “who I know from his days at the San Francisco Conservatory,” where he was the founding director of the Roots, Jazz and American Music program. “I’m hearing so much great stuff about the club from other musicians,” Zenón said.

With a Guggenheim, MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship and two Grammy Awards, the 48-year-old Zenón has been recognized as a creative force for more than two decades. In an artform where there’s often pressure to present something new and different he’s thrived by playing the long game.

His quartet features Venezuelan pianist Luis Perdomo, with whom he also records and performs in a duo (their unabashedly romantic ballad album “El Arte del Bolero Vol. 2” won the 2024 Grammy for best Latin jazz album). Austrian bassist Hans Glawischnig anchors the combo, and since Puerto Rican drummer Henry Cole took over the chair from Antonio Sanchez in 2005 the group has maintained the same personnel.

“It’s kind of hard to believe a band can be together that long these days,” Zenón said. “There’s no secret that’s made it work, other than our relationships as people. We get along really well as friends. They’re a perfect vehicle for most of the music I write.”

Using the quartet as his foundation, Zenón has created an enthralling discography that brings a post-bop improvisational ethos to Puerto Rican roots styles like bomba and plena, as well as the popular songs of Puerto Rican composers. He’s pursued a variety of projects with other ensembles and players, but he always comes back to the quartet.

“The nature of the music world, the jazz world, is to always want something new,” he said. “All-star collaborations are really attractive to people. But to me it’s never been attractive to reinvent the band. Once you find a vehicle that works, why would you change anything?”

Another thread that runs through his career is a commitment to education. He’s taught at top universities and conservatories around the world, including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he’s finishing his second year as an assistant professor in the music department.

Always keeping an eye on his homeland, Zenón created Caravana Cultural, a program that brings free jazz classes to young people in rural neighborhoods in Puerto Rico. It’s not surprising that he recognizes a similar impulse in Blanchard to create opportunities for aspiring artists.

“Maybe it comes from his days with Art Blakey,” Zenón said, referring to the drummer who turned his Jazz Messengers band into the music’s most consequential launching pad. “Something I find really inspiring is Terence’s commitment to being a mentor to younger musicians.”

Contact Andrew Gilbert at jazzscribe@aol.com.