DANILO PEREZ

Danilo Perez: Comprovisation and Jazz Globalization

by Eugene Holley, Jr.

58-year-old pianist, composer, bandleader and educator Danilo Perez has played a lot of music from the world and around the world, from the time he played in Dizzy Gillespie’s United Nation Orchestra in the late ’80s to his historic run as a member of Wayne Shorter’s quartet from 2001 to 2023 with drummer Brian Blade and John Patitucci. His 12 albums as a leader include the music of Thelonious Monk, Cuban clave and Brazilian baiao rhythms and folkloric musical genres from his native Panama.

Danilo comes to Smoke with a quicksilver triad consisting of John on bass and longtime collaborator Adam Cruz on drums, who recorded with Danilo on several of his recordings including…Till Then (Verve, 2003), Live at the Jazz Showcase (ArtistShare, 2005), Providencia (Mack Avenue, 2010) and Panama 500 (Mack Avenue, 2014). The trio will be performing new material for a forthcoming album that will feature Danilo’s experiments in odd-meter claves, interpretations of Latin American standards, Stevie Wonder’s “Overjoyed” and two tributes to Dizzy Gillespie and Shorter. This live date pairs Adam with the language John and Danilo created with Shorter.

“Adam and I have had a long relationship since the ’90s,” Danilo says. “Adam and [bassist] Ben Street were my longstanding trio, and we developed a language that I think Adam managed really well: that bilingual expertise, where he could cross over from jazz to the Pan-African roots of this music. Adam brings a perspective of the Caribbean Pan-African language, which is what I'm made out of. I wanted to [merge] that language with the other language that I have developed with Patitucci; the zero gravity experience we developed over the years through the Wayne Shorter Quartet … This is pure magic.” 

To read more, visit https://mags.hothousejazzmagazine.com/5853afc8ce.html#page/6.