Music Issue: Globe-trotting drummer François Zayas goes looking for a challenge.

When I met with drummer and percussionist François Zayas a couple of weeks ago at a coffee shop near his South Philly apartment, he was in between trips to New York to play with saxophonist Steve Coleman at John Zorn’s East Village club, The Stone. Coleman, who had just been named a MacArthur Fellow “genius” a few days earlier, has a history of combining his rhythmically intricate modern jazz with influences from his studies in diverse cultures, gleaned on travels to Ghana, Cuba, Indonesia and Brazil.

On this occasion, Zayas was representing his native Cuba, joining a battery of other Cuban and Brazilian percussionists in combination with Coleman’s Five Elements group. But Coleman may have inadvertently brought a kindred spirit into the fold, as Zayas has been slowly drawing attention for his own complex compositions and inspired blends of Cuban rhythms, classical virtuosity and cerebral jazz since relocating to the States eight years ago.

The blend comes naturally for Zayas, 40, who studied music at Havana’s Instituto Superior de Artes and spent a decade with the National Symphonic Orchestra of Cuba while playing with artists from jazz, hip-hop and rock and touring Europe and North America with the sax-and-percussion quintet Habana Sax. He points to the long history of Afro-Cuban influence on the music, as well as some of his recent predecessors from the island to make an impact on the New York jazz scene, including Dafnis Prieto, Elio Villafranca and Yosvany Terry.

“If I could isolate myself and not be Cuban anymore — because if not, it may sound a little arrogant — I would say that jazz is a Cuban genre,” Zayas says. “Jazz was born in the United States, but I believe that jazz is as Cuban as American. Even when you go to the very beginning of jazz here in the United States, it’s all so connected to what is happening in Cuba and so influenced by Cuban genres and composers. So to me, it’s a genre that we actually share.”

A gifted trap drummer as well as a master of traditional Cuban percussion, Zayas has found himself in a stunning variety of musical situations of late: arranging and producing music for Cuban-American singer Venissa Santi’s Billie Holiday tribute project; adding an array of percussive colors to the local rising-star big band Fresh Cut Orchestra; playing Balkan brass band music with the West Philadelphia Orchestra; collaborating with Bobby Zankel on a Kimmel Center commission combining jazz and hip-hop dance as well as anchoring the new streamlined version of Zankel’s Warriors of the Wonderful Sound ensemble; and leading his own knockout quintet with pianist Manuel Valera, saxophonist Roman Filiu (both fellow Cuban imports), Austrian-born bassist Hans Glawischnig and Fresh Cut Orchestra trumpeter Josh Lawrence.

It’s a welcome rush of activity for Zayas. “Honestly, I haven’t done a lot of stimulating work since I moved here,” he complains. That has begun to change, but he misses touring and the rigor of his classical studies. “It was great training because there was always something new to learn about how to treat the instruments, how to control dynamics, how to apply techniques.”

Later this month, Zayas will be performing in Makandal, a Harlem Stage-commissioned opera composed by one of those Cuban-born contemporaries, saxophonist Terry. He’ll also perform at the Hispanic Choice Awards at the Merriam Theater, and is working on a new large-scale composition, a hybrid of jazz, Cuban and classical music, with Serbian-rooted sounds added in.

“You get influenced by so many things in life,” Zayas says. “I’ve been exposed to so much music, and when you create you’re trying not to sound like any of it. It changes so much from its original form to however it translates in your mind.”