(photo: Brian Jackson for Chicago Tribune)
Miguel Zenon and the Spektral Quartet at Logan Center, Sept. 24:
The 10th Hyde Park Jazz Festival featured several memorable events, but one stood out: the world premiere of Zenon's "Yo Soy La Tradicion" ("I Am Tradition"), a tour de force of composition, performance and improvisation. Zenon's score was packed with remarkably complex string writing for Chicago's Spektral Quartet, the musicians finessing it all, while Zenon offered freewheeling phrasemaking one moment, carefully scored lines the next.
- Howard Reich