bio

Pianist, composer, arranger, saxophonist… Musician in all the extension of the word! rhythm, melody, passion, melancholy, freshness, what is new, What is classic, what is old: an array of feelings!

Tenor player Martin Montenegro was born in Durango, Mexico, June 3rd 1963. At the age of four, his amazed mother caught him playing by ear the Ninth Symphony of Beethoven on the piano. He made music with his body, with tins, buckets and everything that helped him to create music and rhythms. He learned guitar pretty much on his own, as well as playing some flute during high school.

He got married at 17 years of age and raised three beautiful children. This made him forget the music for a while and it is in this period he started working in the restaurant world. At the end of his marriage, he returned to music, but in a more professional way. Music became his main activity until the present time.

Around 1990, he began his formal studies of music at the “School of Music of the Northwest” in Tijuana with the usual courses of solfeggio, choral ensamble, theory, counterpoint and piano.

During those years, he formed several jazz quartets as piano player. In 1993 he began his sax lessons (this would change his life 180º) He soon commuted between Rosarito, Tijuana and Los Angeles where he stayed on weekends playing in the Hollywood Hills. He traveled through several Mexican cities, ending up in Puerto Vallarta in 1994.

Martin began playing saxophone in several clubs in this beautiful beach town. Soon his experience in the restaurant business (which he entered at age 17) led him to get busy all day, running the club Cuates y Cuetes along with his wife Tete. They both ended up developing a new gastronomical concept in Puerto Vallarta and sharing dreams about art and music. Since then, they both organized several music festivals every year. They are the founders of the Puerto Vallarta’s Annual "Spring Equinox Music Festival” celebrated every March 21st at "Los Muertos" beach.

If not on tour, Montenegro hauls out his tenor sax at Cuates y Cuetes and displays its intense yet romantic style of interpretation.