One year after Abel Aranda started studying guitar at the local church in his home city of Villahermosa, Mexico, his teacher played him Michael Brecker’s 2001 Nearness of You: The Ballad Book album, featuring with Herbie Hancock, Pat Metheny, Charlie Haden, and Jack DeJohnette. The 16-year-old boy’s interest in more popular music—punk, rock, metal, and prog rock—took a rapid turn.
“That was the day I fell in love with the sound of jazz,” Aranda recalls. “I
