Pianist Danilo Pérez spent his youth building a solid career as a musician, and as his career moved into high gear, he sat in a position to lead both as a musician and a human being. Pérez was introduced to music at a young age by his father, a professional vocalist, inspiring the young musicians to attend the National Conservatory. He soon became busy on Panama's professional music scene, while simultaneously earning a technical degree in electronics. Pérez knew music should be his career choice though, so he pooled his resources to attend college at the Indiana University in Pennsylvania. He bounced to Berklee for a short time before earning a prime gig playing piano behind jazz legend Jon Hendricks. As his reputation spread across New York, Pérez found work with both straight-ahead jazz and Latin Jazz artists, eventually becoming the pianist for trumpet player Dizzy Gillespie's United Nations Orchestra. Gillespie and others encouraged Pérez to find his voice as a leader, which inspired him to record his first solo album, the self-titled Danilo Perez. Each successive album became a deeper exploration of the shared roots between jazz and Latin music, producing stunning recordings like The Journey, Panamonk, and Central Avenue. After finishing his fifth album, Motherland, Pérez got a call from iconic jazz saxophonist Wayne Shorter for an audition. The pianist took part in the recording session for Shorter's Alegriaand soon became a part of his working quartet. Along with bassist John Patitucci and drummer Brian Blade, Pérez helped Shorter forge a modern identity for his classic compositions, breathing new creative life into the music. Pérez, Patitucci, and Blade gelled into one of the most important rhythm sections in modern jazz, redefining rhythm and harmonic approaches. Ten years later, the group continues to perform as a unit, constantly breaking new ground. Along the way, Pérez has become a social leader in Panama with the establishment of the Panama Jazz Festival. This yearly event combines world-class jazz performances with extensive musical education, making the festival a major draw in Latin America. The festival inspired the Berklee College of Music to collaborate with Pérez on the creation of the Berklee Global Jazz Institute, a new educational component that combines top-notch musical performance with social responsibility. Now an experienced artist in the jazz world, Pérez consistently takes his role as a leader seriously, spreading artistic and social good will around the world.
Pérez's accomplishments both as a musician and social activist have deeply impacted people around the world, adding an important and meaningful role to his music. These actions go beyond the job description of most musicians and truly show his place as a leader in the world. In Part One of our interview with Pérez, we looked at the influence of his father, his early musical experiences, and his immersion in professional music as a youth. Part Two of our interview explored Pérez's move to the States, his collegiate studies, his first jazz gigs in New York, and his job with Gillespie. We delved into Pérez's emergence as a bandleader in Part Three of our interview, digging deeply into his first four albums. Today, we take a look at Pérez's experience as a member of Wayne Shorter's quartet, the establishment of the Panama Jazz Festival, and the creation of the Berklee Global Jazz Institute.
LATIN JAZZ CORNER: Here it is ten years later and Wayne Shorter still has the same quartet with you, bassist John Patitucci, and drummer Brian Blade. Not many groups in jazz today last like that as a solid unit. How much of the creative process is it between all four of you or are you just backing Wayne's concept?
DANILO PÉREZ: Wayne's idea of playing music is very tied up to his belief in humanity. He believes that basically everybody can tap into their own greatness, their own passion, and their own human love of life. I went looking for a fantastic opportunity to play a gig, and we did do great gigs—we played all these amazing performances at very prestigious performance centers. It's more for me at this point in my life though, it has taught me to believe in humanity with an incredible level of faith. It has helped me to not loose hope in humanity.
Meeting Brian, John, Wayne, and his wife has been great. Everytime I go on tour, I come back as if I have been on a meditational retreat or a yoga retreat. I believe in all human beings a little more when I go on tour. I believe that the music is only a tool; it's a tool to express deep emotions. I become a true believer. That has been the biggest lesson; Wayne doesn't really talk in musical terms at all. He has used music to help all of us find our own strength, to find our own light in our life.
It has really made me understand what I love about what I do. I realized what my passion is—I'm a social activist through music. I really believe that through music, you can provide a sense of hope that you can't provide in other ways. I believe that if people learn the values that I gained from early on in music, we will have a better world. I'm really committed to that idea. We have to fight for that kind of happiness that we look for as a human beings, because it's not coming for free.
Wayne does that to you. You come in with all the things that you have learned in music and he says, “Forget all of that and start all over again. Remember when you were a kid." He'll say, “Can you rehearse the unknown?" I guess we can't. With all these things, he had pulled all of us into our danger zones. It's not a comfort zone, it's about survival. But survival requires us to practice true values in humanity—love, respect, discipline, universal responsibility, not taking things for granted. A lot of values that nowadays we need to remind our generation. Entitlement? None of that stuff. It's about being more human and more human as we practice music.
That's what Wayne's amazing contribution is—he leaves a legacy of music that needs to be studied in a human way. It's almost like taking philosophy through music. His level of committment and appreciation is that same as Beethoven or any of those people. But it's because he's functioning on these other values. That's the biggest lesson that we have learned from him. It's not that he has said, “With this note, I like to put this chord." There's none of that. It's like, “Are you willing to play what you're fighting for in life, what you believe in?" It's an experience.
Of course, the result is the kind of music that we do. I can't even explain it. I don't think Brian, John, or Wayne can explain it either. It's four people trusting each other at the highest level and using everything that we love about this journey. It's involves being excited about each other, listening, and respecting each other. Wayne will bring in this amazing piece of music, even like two bars. Then he'll say, “Let's look at this." We look at it and then he'll say, “Let's talk about it." The detachment that he has for something he works with for hours and hours has taught all of us an incredible lesson. It's so deep, it's incredible.
Still to this day, we are all still as excited as we were that first day. We're still looking forward to that mysterious place, thinking “What's gong to happen today?" Sometimes we play together something that people would never know is totally improvised. The best way to describe it for Wayne is when they say, “That's some great new arrangements or great new pieces." And he's like, “Yea, that's cool!" For him, that's an incredible accomplishment, and for us, too, to be able to play with that kind of focus.
Of course, the material that he creates—everytime he puts the pen down to write . . . two bars of Wayne Shorter are like two hundred bars from anyone else. You have to write a lot of bars to even compensate for one note from Wayne Shorter. His stories in one bar are life changing; what he can do in one bar or two bars, they touch you if you're resonating. If you're resonating, then the music is full of information, and full of DNA for you to learn.
LJC: You're really taken a lot of that social responsibility to heart with the Panama Jazz Festival and all the things that you've given back with that. What has that festival meant to you over the years?
DP: It's been a long time commitment. This side of me probably came from my mother, she was part of the Revolutionary Democratic Party. I saw her when I was a kid as a leader and helping people. She believed in equality and helping the poor to have rights. I grew up with that information around. I think a part of everything I did when I left, I really wanted my peers in Panama to have the same opportunity. I really recognized from early on, when a kid is exposed to good behavior and good models, he has a better opportunity to develop.
So I committed from early on. I came back to Panama, since I learned something, I would share it immediately. I would bring books. That was a commitment from the time I left. Living the life with Dizzy, and touring, I always thought of my country, “Wow, I would for all the Panamanians to have this opportunity to be here." They were just amazing opportunitites that we never had.
In 2003, I had saved some money in the summer, and I decided that it was time and I was going to do the festival. I talked to my manager, we talked with some friends in Panama, we put it together, and we did it. It was a labor of love—it took a lot of discipline and a lot of guts. I don't know if I would do it right now! We almost lost our shirts on that. It was an amazing sign of courage. The first year was really important because it showed that we could do it. The idea was to create a place where we could provided education at the same time that we were providing quality artists of the jazz world. I wanted to make Panama the leader in jazz festivals in Latin America. I thought that maybe one day when you talk about the European jazz festivals, you can also talk about the Latin American jazz festivals.
So my idea was to create and to help support education in Latin America. It became a whole education center in Panama; now this is where people go and I'll teach them. People are coming from Venezuela, Brazil, Argentina, and Chile to audition during the festival—they want to have an opportunity to come and study.
I realized that I needed to formalize all that work, so we opened the foundation. The foundation has committed to doing social work through music, that's our main goal. We have our first student graduated with a master's degree from the New England Conservatory—it was a kid that I worked with when he was thirteen or fourteen years old. I'm very proud of him, his name is Louis Carlos Pérez. In the next year and a half, we're going to have at least eight or ten more kids like that, which brings us to the next question—now we have to help to provide work for them so they can come back and teach all the stuff that they've learned.
LJC: You're talking about education a lot, in fact, you just opened up the Berklee Global Jazz Institute. How has your role as a teacher effected you?
DP: The experience that I have had teaching over the last fifteen years, I would say it was a master plan from God. I didn't really want to teach because I saw how hard my parents worked; they struggled so much. Professionals in Panama don't really make that much, not like here. Their salaries are super low. But one time I was at home and I got a call from this kid, he wanted me to teach him. He asked me to send my credits to New England Conservatory; he wanted them to look at it and see if I could be a part time teacher. So I did and I got a part time teaching job. Then they invited me to do a lecture and I did. Then I got two more students and then three more, and all of a sudden, I had all these students. Many of them are now out there playing. Miguel Zenón, Antonio Sanchez . . . there's a long list of people that I worked with, all the way to Zaccai Curtis and Alex Brown. There's a whole bunch of them.
I really realized that what I loved seeing was the making of missionaries—working with people to inspire them. I believe in passionate education. You provide by example how passionate you are in what you're doing. There's not one way to teach—I don't teach one dimensional, I really teach in many dimensions. I work with the strengths and weaknesses of the students and I decide a program for each student. That's the way that I've been teaching forever. I use human experiences; every experience, if I have to use experiences from Tom Harrell, Steve Lacy, Wayne, I will do it if it will benefit the student. I don't teach the student to benefit me! I teach in a very unusual way.
I've been doing this in Panama too for many years, every time I go. I created a movement, all these kids, with all this energy going around. In a way, it's like a cause and effect kind of thing. In Panama, it grew to a point where we had support from New England Conservatory and the Berklee College of Music.
The one problem is that all the kids are coming in, but they all have different challenges; these are challenges that I didn't have. The internet has brought different challenges—the solitude, the me, myself, and I. There's not those big communities, and these great mentors. So I decided that I needed to continue the path of what I'm doing. It feels relevant; I'm feeling like I'm creating the exchanges between the United States and people in Panama as well as other countries.
When Berklee came down and saw what we were doing, they really loved what they saw. So they said, “Look man, we would like to expand on this idea. We would like to see it expanded and benefit even more people in the world." So we came up with the idea of The Global Jazz Institute. There are three goals—social change through music, exploring creativity, and using nature as a source for human creativity. This is what the program is about. We have auditions and the kids who have been a part of it are really talented kids. They are really getting to explore other aspects of the world that will complement their musical talents.
I believe we're going back to the role of the musician—to be the healing one, and to help open new doors. We are preparing students to go to play with masters, and then for them to become relevent by themselves, because the masters are passing away. But they need to keep in tune with what makes us more and more and more human every day.
At the end of day, what I'm really excited about is creating leaders who inspire leadership in others. To me, that is the key. If you look at Monk, Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, and Wayne Shorter, what you see is a common thread in all of them—they were leaders who inspired others to become leaders themselves. That is the beauty of the work. That came by music, by behavior, by true respect, discipline, and apprenticeship. There's a lot of community values that we need to preserve for this music to keep evolving.
Pérez's accomplishments both as a musician and social activist have deeply impacted people around the world, adding an important and meaningful role to his music. These actions go beyond the job description of most musicians and truly show his place as a leader in the world. In Part One of our interview with Pérez, we looked at the influence of his father, his early musical experiences, and his immersion in professional music as a youth. Part Two of our interview explored Pérez's move to the States, his collegiate studies, his first jazz gigs in New York, and his job with Gillespie. We delved into Pérez's emergence as a bandleader in Part Three of our interview, digging deeply into his first four albums. Today, we take a look at Pérez's experience as a member of Wayne Shorter's quartet, the establishment of the Panama Jazz Festival, and the creation of the Berklee Global Jazz Institute.
LATIN JAZZ CORNER: Here it is ten years later and Wayne Shorter still has the same quartet with you, bassist John Patitucci, and drummer Brian Blade. Not many groups in jazz today last like that as a solid unit. How much of the creative process is it between all four of you or are you just backing Wayne's concept?
DANILO PÉREZ: Wayne's idea of playing music is very tied up to his belief in humanity. He believes that basically everybody can tap into their own greatness, their own passion, and their own human love of life. I went looking for a fantastic opportunity to play a gig, and we did do great gigs—we played all these amazing performances at very prestigious performance centers. It's more for me at this point in my life though, it has taught me to believe in humanity with an incredible level of faith. It has helped me to not loose hope in humanity.
Meeting Brian, John, Wayne, and his wife has been great. Everytime I go on tour, I come back as if I have been on a meditational retreat or a yoga retreat. I believe in all human beings a little more when I go on tour. I believe that the music is only a tool; it's a tool to express deep emotions. I become a true believer. That has been the biggest lesson; Wayne doesn't really talk in musical terms at all. He has used music to help all of us find our own strength, to find our own light in our life.
It has really made me understand what I love about what I do. I realized what my passion is—I'm a social activist through music. I really believe that through music, you can provide a sense of hope that you can't provide in other ways. I believe that if people learn the values that I gained from early on in music, we will have a better world. I'm really committed to that idea. We have to fight for that kind of happiness that we look for as a human beings, because it's not coming for free.
Wayne does that to you. You come in with all the things that you have learned in music and he says, “Forget all of that and start all over again. Remember when you were a kid." He'll say, “Can you rehearse the unknown?" I guess we can't. With all these things, he had pulled all of us into our danger zones. It's not a comfort zone, it's about survival. But survival requires us to practice true values in humanity—love, respect, discipline, universal responsibility, not taking things for granted. A lot of values that nowadays we need to remind our generation. Entitlement? None of that stuff. It's about being more human and more human as we practice music.
That's what Wayne's amazing contribution is—he leaves a legacy of music that needs to be studied in a human way. It's almost like taking philosophy through music. His level of committment and appreciation is that same as Beethoven or any of those people. But it's because he's functioning on these other values. That's the biggest lesson that we have learned from him. It's not that he has said, “With this note, I like to put this chord." There's none of that. It's like, “Are you willing to play what you're fighting for in life, what you believe in?" It's an experience.
Of course, the result is the kind of music that we do. I can't even explain it. I don't think Brian, John, or Wayne can explain it either. It's four people trusting each other at the highest level and using everything that we love about this journey. It's involves being excited about each other, listening, and respecting each other. Wayne will bring in this amazing piece of music, even like two bars. Then he'll say, “Let's look at this." We look at it and then he'll say, “Let's talk about it." The detachment that he has for something he works with for hours and hours has taught all of us an incredible lesson. It's so deep, it's incredible.
Still to this day, we are all still as excited as we were that first day. We're still looking forward to that mysterious place, thinking “What's gong to happen today?" Sometimes we play together something that people would never know is totally improvised. The best way to describe it for Wayne is when they say, “That's some great new arrangements or great new pieces." And he's like, “Yea, that's cool!" For him, that's an incredible accomplishment, and for us, too, to be able to play with that kind of focus.
Of course, the material that he creates—everytime he puts the pen down to write . . . two bars of Wayne Shorter are like two hundred bars from anyone else. You have to write a lot of bars to even compensate for one note from Wayne Shorter. His stories in one bar are life changing; what he can do in one bar or two bars, they touch you if you're resonating. If you're resonating, then the music is full of information, and full of DNA for you to learn.
LJC: You're really taken a lot of that social responsibility to heart with the Panama Jazz Festival and all the things that you've given back with that. What has that festival meant to you over the years?
DP: It's been a long time commitment. This side of me probably came from my mother, she was part of the Revolutionary Democratic Party. I saw her when I was a kid as a leader and helping people. She believed in equality and helping the poor to have rights. I grew up with that information around. I think a part of everything I did when I left, I really wanted my peers in Panama to have the same opportunity. I really recognized from early on, when a kid is exposed to good behavior and good models, he has a better opportunity to develop.
So I committed from early on. I came back to Panama, since I learned something, I would share it immediately. I would bring books. That was a commitment from the time I left. Living the life with Dizzy, and touring, I always thought of my country, “Wow, I would for all the Panamanians to have this opportunity to be here." They were just amazing opportunitites that we never had.
In 2003, I had saved some money in the summer, and I decided that it was time and I was going to do the festival. I talked to my manager, we talked with some friends in Panama, we put it together, and we did it. It was a labor of love—it took a lot of discipline and a lot of guts. I don't know if I would do it right now! We almost lost our shirts on that. It was an amazing sign of courage. The first year was really important because it showed that we could do it. The idea was to create a place where we could provided education at the same time that we were providing quality artists of the jazz world. I wanted to make Panama the leader in jazz festivals in Latin America. I thought that maybe one day when you talk about the European jazz festivals, you can also talk about the Latin American jazz festivals.
So my idea was to create and to help support education in Latin America. It became a whole education center in Panama; now this is where people go and I'll teach them. People are coming from Venezuela, Brazil, Argentina, and Chile to audition during the festival—they want to have an opportunity to come and study.
I realized that I needed to formalize all that work, so we opened the foundation. The foundation has committed to doing social work through music, that's our main goal. We have our first student graduated with a master's degree from the New England Conservatory—it was a kid that I worked with when he was thirteen or fourteen years old. I'm very proud of him, his name is Louis Carlos Pérez. In the next year and a half, we're going to have at least eight or ten more kids like that, which brings us to the next question—now we have to help to provide work for them so they can come back and teach all the stuff that they've learned.
LJC: You're talking about education a lot, in fact, you just opened up the Berklee Global Jazz Institute. How has your role as a teacher effected you?
DP: The experience that I have had teaching over the last fifteen years, I would say it was a master plan from God. I didn't really want to teach because I saw how hard my parents worked; they struggled so much. Professionals in Panama don't really make that much, not like here. Their salaries are super low. But one time I was at home and I got a call from this kid, he wanted me to teach him. He asked me to send my credits to New England Conservatory; he wanted them to look at it and see if I could be a part time teacher. So I did and I got a part time teaching job. Then they invited me to do a lecture and I did. Then I got two more students and then three more, and all of a sudden, I had all these students. Many of them are now out there playing. Miguel Zenón, Antonio Sanchez . . . there's a long list of people that I worked with, all the way to Zaccai Curtis and Alex Brown. There's a whole bunch of them.
I really realized that what I loved seeing was the making of missionaries—working with people to inspire them. I believe in passionate education. You provide by example how passionate you are in what you're doing. There's not one way to teach—I don't teach one dimensional, I really teach in many dimensions. I work with the strengths and weaknesses of the students and I decide a program for each student. That's the way that I've been teaching forever. I use human experiences; every experience, if I have to use experiences from Tom Harrell, Steve Lacy, Wayne, I will do it if it will benefit the student. I don't teach the student to benefit me! I teach in a very unusual way.
I've been doing this in Panama too for many years, every time I go. I created a movement, all these kids, with all this energy going around. In a way, it's like a cause and effect kind of thing. In Panama, it grew to a point where we had support from New England Conservatory and the Berklee College of Music.
The one problem is that all the kids are coming in, but they all have different challenges; these are challenges that I didn't have. The internet has brought different challenges—the solitude, the me, myself, and I. There's not those big communities, and these great mentors. So I decided that I needed to continue the path of what I'm doing. It feels relevant; I'm feeling like I'm creating the exchanges between the United States and people in Panama as well as other countries.
When Berklee came down and saw what we were doing, they really loved what they saw. So they said, “Look man, we would like to expand on this idea. We would like to see it expanded and benefit even more people in the world." So we came up with the idea of The Global Jazz Institute. There are three goals—social change through music, exploring creativity, and using nature as a source for human creativity. This is what the program is about. We have auditions and the kids who have been a part of it are really talented kids. They are really getting to explore other aspects of the world that will complement their musical talents.
I believe we're going back to the role of the musician—to be the healing one, and to help open new doors. We are preparing students to go to play with masters, and then for them to become relevent by themselves, because the masters are passing away. But they need to keep in tune with what makes us more and more and more human every day.
At the end of day, what I'm really excited about is creating leaders who inspire leadership in others. To me, that is the key. If you look at Monk, Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, and Wayne Shorter, what you see is a common thread in all of them—they were leaders who inspired others to become leaders themselves. That is the beauty of the work. That came by music, by behavior, by true respect, discipline, and apprenticeship. There's a lot of community values that we need to preserve for this music to keep evolving.
