“Panama 500” by Danilo Pérez

Danilo Pérez can safely be called Panama’s greatest child prodigy. He began playing the piano at the age of three, and at ten he was studying at the National Conservatory of Panama. Later came his training at the renowned Berklee College of Music in the USA. At 23, Dizzy Gillespie brought him into his United Nations Orchestra as its youngest member.

Today he is one of the most highly regarded jazz pianists in the world – whether with his own groups or as a permanent member of the Wayne Shorter Quartet. His ability to combine bebop with Latin elements is just one hallmark of his virtuoso playing. Just how broad his palette is can be heard, among other places, on his album “Panama 500” (2014). The work was commissioned to mark the 500th anniversary of the Spaniard Balboa’s discovery of the Pacific on Panama’s west coast and the centenary of the Panama Canal.

As on no other album, Pérez presents himself here as a cultural bridge-builder, combining modern jazz with indigenous chants, folk rhythms and European elements of chamber music into one great whole. Pérez’s artistic and social vision is always about bringing different outlooks together. Pérez’s humanist commitment is also reflected in his many activities outside music: he serves as a UNESCO Artist for Peace and runs the Danilo Pérez Foundation, through which he nurtures the potential of young people.

In this sense, “Panama 500” also represents the sum of all the facets of this proud Panamanian.