American jazz saxophonist Wayne Shorter's acclaimed quartet with Danilo Perez, John Patitucci, and Brian Blade, and the legendary Cuban pianist Chucho Valdes are among the headliners at the 6th annual Panama Jazz Festival, which will take place in Panama City January 12 through 17, 2009. The Boston-based Panamanian pianist Danilo Perez, who founded the festival in 2003 and whose Danilo Perez Foundation coordinates its educational component, anticipates more than 16,000 attendees.
"The Panama Jazz Festival has been a magical journey to a dream we've had for years in Panama," says Perez. "We, as a country, see the entire world pass through the Panama Canal every day, and we are honored to be the bridge of the Americas. But today, we are proud to say that every year -- for the past six years -- the Panama Jazz Festival has been the national event where the world does not pass by, but makes a stop in our wonderful land. The world's best jazz artists, as well as students and volunteers from all over the globe, unite in Panama with one goal in mind: to celebrate the world's diversity through jazz."
The 2009 festival will be dedicated to the late bassist, composer, and arranger Clarence Martin Sr., whose contributions to Panamanian jazz date from the 1940s and have influenced several generations of musicians from many genres such as jazz, classical, and Caribbean music.
Meet the 6th Panama Jazz Festival Artists: Wayne Shorter, John Patitucci, Danilo Pérez, Brian Blade, Chucho Valdés,
Marco Pignataro, Eddie Gómez, Billy Drummond, Luba Mason, Hubert Laws,
Jimmy Haslip, Rubén Blades.
8:00 p.m. • Marco Pignataro Quintet with Eddie Gómez, Billy Drummond, Mark Kramer and Matt Marvuglio
9:15 p.m. • Chucho Valdés Quitet with Lázaro Rivero, Yaroldy Abreu, Mayra Valdés and Juan Carlos Rojas.
Viernes 16 de enero:
8:00 p.m. • Luba Mason and her band Kava with Hubert Laws, Jimmy Haslip, Rubén Blades, Walter Flores, Edin Solis, Carlos Vargas and Gilberto Jarquín
9:15 p.m. • Wayne Shorter Quartet with Danilo Pérez, John Patitucci and Brian Blade
CONCERTS AT TEATRO ASCANIO AROSEMENA
Every afternoon the Festival presents the Family Concert Series. This year: Cuarteto de Berklee College of Music, Anibal De León y su trío, Reggie Johnson , Quinteto de Jazz del New England Conservatory, Graciela Nuñez e invitados, Dúo New England Conservatory, Babito Samba Jazz, Quinteto de Victor Vitín Paz, Neil Lenard y Grupo La Raza. For dates and times visit the CALENDER
CLINICS
Each year, the festival invites educational institutions that teach one week of private and group instruction during the festival. The institutions confirmed to participate in 2009 include the New England Conservatory, Berklee College of Music, Puerto Rico Conservatory, and the Golandsky Piano Institute.
Along the snaky contours of Panama City’s Avenida Central, a thoroughfare and a way of life celebrated by Danilo Pérez on his 1998 Impulse album Central Avenue, Kuna Indian women with gold rings in their noses bargain with Chinese and Hindu shopkeepers as Panamanians of every imaginable hue hustle by. Called the “Crossroads of the World,” Panamá is the very definition of a multi-cultural Mecca -- a land where people from virtually every corner of the planet live and work side-by-side in a harmonious atmosphere that would be envied in most major cities of the world.
It’s not surprising that Pérez, Panama’s most noted musician of his generation, has for the past two decades been generously giving back to the land that nurtured his abundant talents. Today, the Danilo Pérez Foundation has become a leading force in this land of 3.2 million for cultural development and music education. Headed by his wife Patricia and assisted by his parents, the foundation has the stated goal of “offering opportunities for the cultural growth of Panamanian youth of limited resources that have a serious commitment to the study of music” with such specific objectives as discovering and nurturing Panamanian talent, providing the highest standards in music education, and making the country a center for cultural exchange.
The foundation’s flagship project is the annual Panama Jazz Festival, now in its sixth year. Pérez created the event to make possible for Panamanians to experience both the talent and the camaraderie of visiting, world class musicians. “One of the most incredible things that is happening is the involvement of people from throughout the country from all social backgrounds,” he comments. “You’ll see a poor kid from the countryside sitting next to a rich kid from the city at these concerts. That’s what we want.
At an August 25 press conference renowned Panamanian pianist and composer Danilo Pérez Jr. announced that the 2009 version of the Panama Jazz Festival will be held January 12 - 17, 2009, with an educational mission expanding again this year and the workshops and auditions moving to Panama Canal Authority facilities in Balboa.
This past January's festival featured four educational institutions, the founding New England Conservatory and Berklee College of Music, and added the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz Performance, a small elite graduate program based at Loyola University in New Orleans, the International Association for Jazz Education and the Conservatorio de Musica de Puerto Rico, all of which played various roles, not all of them seen onstage.
Pérez said that the educational institutions participating will be "basically the same as before," and added that Oberlin and Miami University are also expressing interest but that the extent of each institution's participation in a given year is largely a function of the budget that's available for that purpose. Typically some of the institutions send advanced student bands, as the New England Conservatory and the Thelonious Monk Institute did this past January, and those and others also send professors who, along with some of the featured musicians, give workshops and hold auditions. One of the main draws for the jazz festivals is that young musicians from Panama and other Latin American countries are attracted to the workshops and auditions, all of them to improve their musicianship and some in search of scholarships or school admissions that might be won at the auditions.
