The Puerto Rican saxophonist Miguel Zenón and Venezuelan pianist Luis Perdomo – a playing partner from student days – made the the first volume of El Arte Del Bolero when the pandemic was keeping musicians and listeners apart. But once audiences returned, live reactions to their jazz accounts of some of Latin-American music's most affecting romantic songs were so warm that a second volume was inevitable. For El Arte Del Bolero Vol 2, these two eloquent improvisers made a firm decision about their priorities. “We wanted this to be all about the material”, Zenón writes in his liner note. “The songs themselves would be the main characters”. But that was by no means a brake on the duo's spontaneity. Two contrasting staples of the songbook of legendary Puerto Rican bandleader Tito Rodríguez highlight the freedom of their conversations - with Perdomo quietly shadowing the sax and Zenón discreetly and delicately doubling the time and then falling back into the song-line on the wistful ‘En La Oscuridad’, while both players abandon tempo and let the simmering melody of ‘En La Soledad’ float in delicate piano runs and low-end rumbles around long sax tones and airy flurries.

Zenon's graceful lines float and glide on a playful account of Rubén Blades' ‘Paula C’, and Perdomo's liquid touch and unobtrusive virtuosity and the saxophonist's lyrical tenderness respectively decorate two Venezuelan songs, the traditional ‘Motivos’ and Simon Diaz's ‘Caballo Viejo’. But the highlight is the finale, where both players irrepressibly twist and dance on Puerto Rican composer Rafael Hernández' ‘Silencio’. A devoted tribute to a songbook and a culture, from two musicians steeped in both.