Children of the Light Trio, Ronnie Scott’s, London – review

Financial Times: July 15, 2014

The jazz virtuosos proved themselves to be more than Wayne Shorter’s rhythm section

Children of the Light Trio are three band-leading virtuosos who regularly convene as the rhythm section of Wayne Shorter’s quartet. The saxophonist formed his band in 2000, and the trio’s ability to second-guess Shorter’s oblique turns while delivering surprises of their own is legendary. Here, though, they performed without their leader, and it was pianist Danilo Peréz who set things in motion with his fragments of scales, scatterings of chords and rhythmic motifs.

As with Shorter’s band, the music unfolded at angles, smouldering grooves came with melodramatic thumps and the collective invention was intense. There were vague hints of the Shorter repertoire – a pulled-out-of-shape “Footprints” in the first set; a lovely mid-tempo lope led by bassist John Patitucci in the second.

But this wasn’t just the Wayne Shorter quartet playing without Wayne Shorter. Recent Peréz recordings have explored the evolution of Latin American musical traditions, and the trio referenced these concerns in both sets. The long first piece was a carousel of styles that opened with stark piano harmonies, the swoosh of drummer Brian Blade’s cymbals and counterpoint bass guitar. Peréz darted from classical fugue to African chant and from indigenous song to Latin pulse, while Blade and Patitucci added thoughts of their own. They settled on a slow burn and finally ended with three sharp chords and a roll of drums.

The set continued with whisper-quiet chamber jazz – Blade played drums with his hands – and concluded with a dark-toned construction of discordant piano fragments scattered over Patitucci’s trenchant bowed double bass. It turned this way and that before rampaging out over an impulsive Blade shuffle.

The extended second set continued the three-way conversation, was more upbeat and settled more easily. The first number implied swing and elliptically quoted Charlie Parker’s “Billie’s Bounce”, there was a lovely reverie, an oblique and funky samba and a sedate and moving memorial to bassist Charlie Haden, who died last Friday. Each piece shape-shifted, changed pulse and periodically locked into a groove. They ended with the cultural melting pot of “Chocolito”, a Peréz composition that takes in African blues and classical romance, retreats in volume and then roars into a Latin groove to end on a high.

Bridging Cultures and Dimensions of Jazz

All About Jazz: June 3, 2014

Whether with his own ensembles or as a sideman, Danilo Perez has long been an iconic jazz pianist, but above and beyond his success as a performer and recording artist, he has become a manifestation and symbol of cross-cultural dialogue.

His music brings together mainstream and Latin influences in a unique way. He always brings something new into the mix, whether early on with Dizzy Gillespie, Jon Hendricks or Wynton Marsalis, his award-winning CD, Panamonk (Implulse, 1996), and more recently with the Wayne Shorter Quartet as well as his own groups featuring Brian Blade, John Patitucci, Ben Street, Adam Cruz, and others. His most recent recordings, Providencia (Mack Avenue, 2010) and Panama 500 (Mack Avenue, 2-14) are in homage to his home country of Panama, yet they incorporate elements of Cuba, straight ahead jazz, European impressionism, African, and other musical heritages.

Perez sees music as a multi-dimensional bridge among peoples. He has dedicated himself to making a better world through his efforts as an Artist For Peace with UNESCO, Artistic director of the Berklee Global Jazz Institute, the Panama Jazz Festival, the Danilo Perez Foundation, and other organizations. In everything he does, Perez is always seeking unity, meaning, healing, and the betterment of mankind. He is truly a musical innovator and humanitarian, as this interview illustrates.

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Danilo Pérez – Panama 500

London Jazz: April 2, 2014

It’s 500 years since the ‘discovery’ of Panama and pianist Danilo Pérez calls this album a ‘rediscovery’.

He draws together modern jazz with European Classical and indigenous Guna music into an aural image of his country’s history. ‘I have been working for years to make music that has an identity very similar to the role that Panama plays in the world.’ Pérez is perhaps best known as Wayne Shorter’s pianist, and drummer Brian Blade and bassist John Pattitucci from Shorter’s band join Pérez for several tracks on this album; the rest comprises his regular trio with Ben Street and Adam Cruz, melding jazz and traditional Panamanian rhythms, to ‘expand on the idea of clave’, as Pérez puts it.

Traditional Panamanian music, chants and percussion sometimes stand alone in short tracks; mostly Pérez has created music around their rhythms.Rediscovery of the South Sea opens the album with composed violin lines (Alex Hargreaves) teasing out the inner harmonies of the piano chords. It’s like a miniature orchestral piece, with sinuous Eastern violin lines draped around the local La Denesa dance rhythms, dense harmonies and playful improvisations. (Guna chant from Roman Diaz and percussion from Ricaurte Villarreal) There’s a free section where Perez asked Street and Cruz to play ‘as if they were lost in the jungle,’ like Spanish explorers. ‘When the piano brings the melody back,’ Pérez says, ‘I’m trying to play like it’s two o’clock in the morning and the left hand is drunk.’ Gratitude, written for his loved ones and fellow musicians, has a joyful calypso feel, with deliciously rustling drum texture, the final ringing chord unleashing all the piano’s deep shadowy overtones.

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Danilo Pérez: Panama 500

Pop Matters: March 28, 2014

Jazz pianist Danilo Pérez works in the rarified air of modern jazz much of the time.

He plays with the Wayne Shorter Quartet, a space of daring and thrilling jazz abstraction. What that music “means”, beyond its own thrilling vocabulary of feeling and musical exploration, is hard to say.

But Pérez also often works on music – also jazz but not just jazz – that comes with a story, the story of Pérez’s home in Panama. And Panama 500 is the remarkable follow-up to 2010’s Providencia, which refracted Panamanian folk music through jazz and classical lenses to create something bracing and new.

Again, Pérez aptly showcases his outstanding trio (with Ben Street on bass and Adam Cruz on drums) on most tracks, supplementing the band with strings, voices, percussion, and particular musical elements from the native Guna culture. The trio from Shorter’s group also plays on four tracks here, moving and responding to each other with characteristic sympathy and musical ease.

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Danilo Perez receives Medal of Jerusalem

Usonica: March 21, 2014

The Panamanian pianist Danilo Perez was awarded yesterday to the "Jerusalem Medal" in recognition of his contribution to music and peace. The ceremony was held at City Hall at a meeting of the Committee on Culture of the City.

DaniloPerez, 49 years old, is an artist for peace by UNESCO and cultural ambassador of the Republic of Panama, he studied music at the Berklee College of Music, is founder of the Panama Jazz Festival and started playing at three years accompanied by his father (also a musician). Perez is considered one of the wonders of modern jazz piano, who throughout his career has played with numerous jazz musicians frontline.

In this regard, Perez recalled his first contact with Israel in 1999, a trip during which claims to have felt "a tremendous connection has grown stronger day by day." "I do not expect this is a very nice (...) gesture is always a liability than having a prize, it's a wonderful thing," he said at the ceremony, adding a reflection on the importance of "being present and bring the message that music serves as a platform for peace "because" is one of the most effective ways to practice diplomacy tools, and are here to offer ideas and perhaps develop joint to a peaceful future projects, and eventually provide stability in this country. "

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Danilo Perez weaves jazz tapestry of Panama past and present

The Bay State Banner: February 20, 2014

Pianist Danilo Perez’s music presents complexity, exuberance and a definitive sense of place expressed through tone and rhythmic authority.

“Panama 500” is the most recent CD recording by Perez, an exacting, often didactic collection of tunes that touch on politics and cultural hegemony. It is, as most of his works, a unique jazz achievement — a post bebop meditation that explores one of South America’s important countries.

“Panama 500” is a both celebration and a lament. At once it is a musical history of the country, a chronicle of its people and their contribution to world culture and invention. At the same time it is a tale of invasion and military conquest by the Spanish in the 16th century and the domination of the land’s indigenous people.

“Yeah, they discovered the Pacific,” said Perez, but he also noted that native people in the area were as advanced as the explorers Rodrigo de Bastidas and then, Christopher Columbus who found the country 500 years ago.

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Jazz Brimming With Ideas

The New York Times: February 7, 2014

Danilo Pérez began his early set at the Jazz Standard on Thursday night with a busily efficient overture, laying out many of his themes and protocols for the ensuing hour.

Within the first minute of the piece, “Rediscovery of the South Sea,” there was an intriguing bramble of push-pull tensions between bass, violin and percussion; a more spacious motif that Mr. Pérez unhurriedly teased out at the piano; and a hale-sounding Yoruban chant by Roman Díaz, providing his own punctuation on a batá drum.

The evening’s program had been adapted from “Panama 500,” Mr. Pérez’s highly plotted, superarticulate, breezily ambitious new album (Mack Avenue). A distillation of ideas developed over roughly the last 15 years — mingling elements of classical form, jazz flexibility and Latin-American folk melody — it’s impressive for both its design and its execution, and for the strong implication that those two qualities are inextricable, even indivisible.

Mr. Pérez built the album around the expressive rapport of two longtime rhythm sections: one featuring the bassist Ben Street and the drummer Adam Cruz, members of his working trio; and the other featuring the bassist John Patitucci and the drummer Brian Blade, his fellow travelers in the Wayne Shorter Quartet.

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Panama's history set to music on "Panama 500"

The Boston Globe: February 3, 2014

The 47-year-old Boston jazz pianist, composer, and educator Danilo Pérez (currently at Berklee) has long explored the music of his native Panama in different settings. “Panama 500” may be his most accomplished piece yet.

Commemorating the 500th anniversary of Spanish explorer Balboa’s “discovery” of the Pacific Ocean on Panama’s west coast as well as the 100th anniversary of the Panama Canal, Pérez tells the history of his country through its music, from the chants of the indigenous Guna people and folkloric dance rhythms through modern jazz.

But rather than offering a strict chronological retelling, Pérez juxtaposes and layers different musical vocabularies. Atop the ancient percussion rhythms of the introductory “Rediscovery of the South Sea,” he sets not just modern instruments (like violin and his own piano) but also pungent modern harmonies. It’s history in the present tense, experienced as a memory. Alternating his long-standing trio of bassist Ben Street and drummer Adam Cruz with his rhythm mates from the Wayne Shorter Quartet, bassist John Patitucci and drummer Brian Blade, Pérez adds percussion and strings. Through tuneful set pieces and improvisations, the music remains focused and evocative.

Danilo Perez celebrates the pulse of Panama

The Chicago Tribune

Twenty years ago, two relatively unknown jazz musicians made their Chicago debuts before a smallish audience in a long-forgotten North Side club called Quicksilver.

They played exceptionally well that night in April, 1994, suggesting the world would hear more about them and their boldly international perspectives on how jazz can be re-imagined.

Since then, Panamanian pianist Danilo Perez and Puerto Rican saxophonist David Sanchez have become major musical figures, each still imbuing jazz with the sounds of their homelands. Perez has played periodically in Chicago through the years, especially in large venues such as Orchestra Hall at Symphony Center and often in the company of saxophonist Wayne Shorter. But Perez hasn’t played a club date here in years, so his return to the Jazz Showcase on Thursday evening marked a significant occasion – a rare chance to hear
the eminent pianist at close range, leading his own quartet.

Not surprisingly, a large audience turned out, listeners paying close attention to Perez’s experiments in interweaving music of his native Panama and his adopted home, the United States. Perez returned the compliment by delivering scores of considerable complexity and sophistication, rightly assuming his fans were more than willing to take a journey with him into unfamiliar sounds.

Danilo Perez, world-class pianist out to change the world

The Boston Globe: April 28, 2013

The Boston GlobeThis jazz giant has faith that music can contribute to humanitarian work. Now it’s up to his Berklee College students to prove it.

Danilo Perez has just finished a clinic for young jazz players, and it’s time for his next gig. He slips out of the auditorium, crosses a narrow street, and ducks into a rehearsal room crawling with trumpeters, guitarists, singers, and more than a half-dozen percussionists. Like nearly everyone else at January’s weeklong Panama Jazz Festival, in his native Panama City, the musicians are waiting for him, a blur in a navy button-down, black pants, and thick-frame glasses. Everybody wants a piece of Danilo.

Haggard from a punishing schedule, the renowned composer, pianist, and educator is growing sicker by the day. Tomorrow, the big band he leads will close the festival before a sea of fans on a former American military base near the Panama Canal. Then he will check into a hospital, barely able to breathe. But today they must practice

The band begins rehearsing a Perez composition, Patria, or Homeland, written as a tribute to his country. The horns and drums build, but he waves them off. “The feeling is not there,” he says. He needs the ensemble to evoke, with its tones and rhythms, Spain’s colonization of Panama.

They start anew. Again, he stops the song. The music — too flat, too cold — dies. “This is important!” he says, pleading for more drama, more emotion. “You guys didn’t watch movies, man?”

The rehearsal goes on like this, with Perez standing over an electric piano, a gold cross dangling from his neck, frustration growing with each bloodless start. It’s not their musicianship he questions. He’s after something less tangible. “You know how to play correctly? That doesn’t mean anything,” he says. “That’s like when a machine washes clothes correctly.”

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