" data-original-title="" title="">Abel Mireles' because where the news is sensational, the deeper substance of people's lives and culture often goes unnoticed. Lawlessness has, it is true, touched Mireles personally, ultimately taking his father. But Mireles' story is like so many otherwise ordinary ones both sides of a largely political border.

Mireles was raised in a musical family. His formal training was by way of the University of Texas at El Paso and William Paterson University in Wayne, New Jersey, just outside Manhattan. Mireles is a forceful player: there is nothing understated about him. He is straight-ahead, post-bop grit, and a lot of it. While Mexico may show up allusively in titles such as "Xochilpitzahuatl" (a Nahuatl word literally meaning a spray of flowers), a blindfold test would not likely lead one to think "Latin fusion" player. He blows hard and insistently and writes modally. Mireles is polished, but scarcely delicate.

From the first assertive quarter notes of "Heart Pain" where Mireles is accompanied by pianist