For those unaware, Grammy Award winner Miguel Zenón has just released his new album, Vanguardia Subterránea (Underground Vanguard) this past August 29th, 2025, his first live album by the Miguel Zenón Quartet recorded at The Village Vanguard in September 2024 – New York’s oldest and most prestigious jazz club.

The album features all new material including six compositions by Zenón, plus his arrangements of Willie Colón and Héctor Lavoe’s “El Día de Mi Suerte” (1973) and Gilberto Santa Rosa’s “Perdóname” (1990).

1. Abre Cuto Güiri Mambo
2. El Día de Mi Suerte
3. Vita
4. Dale la Vuelta
5. Coordenadas
6. Vanguardia Subterránea
7. Bendición
8. Perdóname

Zenón’s 18th album as a leader, and was recorded over two nights in September 2024 and has been released on his very own label Miel Music, opens a spirited Zenón original Abre Cuto Güiri Mambo (a phrase that in bozal, or first-generation African Spanish, means “open up your ear and hear the mambo”) and then we get the furtively propellent El Día de Mi Suerte, the playfully flirtatious Vita and the free-wheeling Dale la Vuelta (which itself translates to “Turn It Around”).

Along next on this intensely grooved album is the sheer elegance of the super smooth Coordenadas which is itself backed seamlessly by an emotively, melodic poem sculpted especially for the title cut Vanguardia Subterránea, the set rounding out on the dulcet hipsway of Bendición (which is itself inspired by Latin American traditions and Zenón’s mother, Nancy Matos Soto), coming to an all too soon close on the all-embodying Perdóname, a reworking of Jorge Luis Piloto’s giant hit from 1990.

Despite performing many hundreds of concerts around the world over the span of two decades, until now the quartet’s phenomenal, always surprising live shows have never been released as an album. “This album has an energy that’s really different than all our other records,” says Zenón, “because it was recorded in this sanctuary of music.”

The beloved Village Vanguard’s dim, red, subterranean room on Seventh Avenue South opened in 1935 and has had a full-time jazz policy since 1957. “It’s the dream of every jazz musician,” says Zenón, “to play in that legendary room.”

www.miguelzenon.com

Miguel Zenón @ Facebook