Grammy-winning saxophonist Miguel Zenón and prolific pianist Luis Perdomo will team up for two exceptional shows at Berlin. Their mission? To celebrate the Latin American songbook and the joy, tenderness, and beauty within.

Grammy winner, Doris Duke Artist, and Guggenheim and MacArthur Fellow Miguel Zenón represents a select group of musicians who have masterfully balanced and blended the often-contradictory poles of innovation and tradition. Widely considered one of the most groundbreaking and influential saxophonists and composers of his generation, he has also developed a unique voice as a conceptualist, concentrating his efforts on perfecting a fine mix between jazz and his many musical influences.

Born and raised in San Juan, Puerto Rico, Zenón has released seventeen recordings as a leader, including his latest, “Golden City” (2024); the Grammy-winning album “El Arte Del Bolero Vol. 2” (2023); and the Grammy-nominated albums “Música De Las Américas” (2022), “Sonero: The Music of Ismael Rivera” (2019) and “Yo Soy La Tradición” (2018). He has worked with luminaries including the SFJAZZ Collective, Charlie Haden, Fred Hersch, Kenny Werner, David Sánchez, Danilo Pérez, The Village Vanguard Orchestra, Kurt Elling, Joey Calderazzo, Steve Coleman, Ray Barreto, Andy Montañez, Jerry Gonzalez & The Fort Apache Band, the Mingus Big Band, and Bobby Hutcherson.

In 2008, he received a fellowship from the prestigious John Simon Guggenheim Foundation. Later that year, he was one of 25 distinguished individuals chosen to receive the coveted MacArthur Fellowship, also known as the “Genius Grant.” In 2011 he founded Caravana Cultural, a program which presents free-of-charge Jazz concerts in rural areas of Puerto Rico. In 2022 he received an honorary doctorate from La Universidad del Sagrado Corazón in San Juan, Puerto Rico. In 2024 he received a Doris Duke Artist Award from the Doris Duke Foundation.

Zenón has been featured in publications such as the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, the Boston Globe, and the Chicago Tribune. In addition, he topped both the Jazz Artist of the Year and Alto Saxophonist of the Year categories in the 2014 JazzTimes Critics Poll and was selected as Alto Saxophonist of the Year by the Jazz Journalists Association in 2015, 2018, 2019 and 2020. In 2023, he was recognized by the same organization as the Composer of the Year.

As a composer, he has been commissioned by SFJAZZ, NYO Jazz, The New York State Council on the Arts, Chamber Music America, Logan Center for The Arts, The Hyde Park Jazz Festival, The John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, MIT, Spektral Quartet, Miller Theater, The Hewlett Foundation, Peak Performances, PRISM Quartet, and many of his peers. Zenón has given hundreds of lectures and masterclasses at institutions all over the world and is a faculty member in the Music & Theater Arts Department at MIT, as well as the current Visiting Scholar for the Harmony and Jazz Composition Department at Berklee College of Music.

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Born in 1971 in Caracas, Luis Perdomo was playing on Venezuelan TV and radio stations from the age of 12. In 1993, Perdomo relocated to New York and enrolled with a full scholarship to the Manhattan School of Music, where he studied with Harold Danko and classical pianist Martha Pestalozzi and earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in 1997. Perdomo later studied with pianist Sir Roland Hanna at Queens College, and received his master’s degree in 2000. "Studying with Sir Roland Hanna … I began to look at jazz and classical music in a new and more in-depth way, and my playing evolved accordingly,” he says. Perdomo has appeared on over 200 records, and he has become a first-class sideman to artists like Dave Douglas, David Sanchez, Tom Harrell, Steve Turre, Ben Wolfe, Ray Barretto, Brian Lynch, David Gilmore, Conrad Herwig, Ignacio Berroa, Ralph Irizarry and Timbalaye and other great musicians. He was a member of Ravi Coltrane’s Quartet for 10 years and is a founding member of the Miguel Zenón Quartet. Perdomo recorded on three Grammy-nominated CDs: Coltrane’s Influx, and Zenon’s Esta Plena, and Alma Adentro: The Puerto Rican Songbook.