Danilo Pérez
- Music Department
- Composer
At the age of three his bandleader father gave him a set of bongos,
thus beginning the musical education of young Danilo Perez. He began
piano studies at the National Conservatory of Panama at the age of
five. Attending the Berklee School of Music in 1985, Perez discovered
his love and affinity for Jazz. An adventurous musician, Perez is noted
for his blending of Panamanian folk music, African, Afro-Latin,
Afro-American, and Amerindian musical elements to his arrangements and
compositions--a trait cultivated in his native Panama and further
developed by his work with a wide variety of American and Latin
American musicians that have included 'Jon Hendricks', Paquito D'Rivera, and Wynton Marsalis to
name a few. Perez was also a beneficiary of the legendary Jazz
trumpeter and musical ambassador Dizzy Gillespie as he spent four years with
Gillespie and his United Nations Orchestra. A growing appeal for
Perez's music occurred after the release of his second album as a
leader which was entitled "The Journey" (1994). Other more impressive
albums soon followed with the 1998-release "PanaMonk" (a musical nod to
his homeland of Panama and the noted Jazz pianist and composer
Thelonious Monk);and the 1998 album "Central Avenue". He has also been a
featured performer on several occasions with Jazz at Lincoln Center. In
the summer of 1998 Perez was voted "Best Artist or Band in Performance"
at the first annual New York Jazz Awards. A man who wears many musical
hats, Perez is a noted music educator who teaches at The New England
Conservatory in Boston, Massachusetts, USA. In true 'Gillespian'
fashion, Perez stands at the forefront of artists who have successfully
integrated various music forms, particularly those of Africa and the
indigenous Americas, with traditional Afro-American Jazz, subsequently
furthering Jazz's influence and reinforcing its natural
internationality.