Raised in Puerto Rico, schooled in jazz at Berklee, and mentored in his youth by influences as powerful as Danilo Pérez and Branford Marsalis, alto saxophonist Miguel Zenón blossomed two decades ago as a tonally subtle postboppish virtuoso with a broad cultural vision. Música de Las Américas is his most ambitious example of those interests yet, with a percussion-expanded version of his long-running quartet visiting the 15th century Caribbean cultures of the Tainos and Caribe populations, the Haitian Revolution and vodou rituals, Aztec ceremonies, contemporary grooves and more.

Considering the breadth of reading and study Zenón has put into this venture, it's a triumph that this set sounds so vivaciously light and free-spirited. ‘Tainos y Caribe’ skims and swerves over wildly asymmetrical stretching of bop swing, (spotlighting the mercurial inventiveness both of the leader and long-time Zenón pianist Luis Perdomo), contrasting with subtle meditations like the sensuously conga-floated ‘Navegando’ or the brooding ‘Venas Abiertas’. ‘Opresion y Revolucion’ jaggedly zigzags over 21st century genre-bridging rhythms and clangy piano vamps, the percussion-led ‘Bambula’ turns into ducking-and-diving postbop, and the buoyant finale ‘Antillano’ cannily catches the contemporary two-way stretch between the popular music of Africa and the modern Americas.

Música de Las Américas represents as broad a soundscape as its title, but Miguel Zenón's incandescent alto always leads the illumination of it.