Piano From Panama: Danilo Perez At Jazz Showcase

Panamanian pianist Danilo Perez shows off a neat cross section of his talents in the Wayne Shorter Quartet, where he's worked for the past few years: a selfless ensemble player with quicksilver instincts, he can alter the density, tempo, or harmonic center of his lines from one bar to the next, and his encyclopedic grasp of both jazz tradition and Latin American folk has set the standard for his peers in the increasingly globalized jazz scene. Over the past decade most of the recordings he's made under his own name have been ambitious genre-straddling suites, which too often constrain his fiery improvisations--the new Across the Crystal Sea (Emarcy), for instance, embeds his quintet in luminous orchestral arrangements by Claus Ogerman, a veteran who's worked with everyone from Antonio Carlos Jobim to George Benson. Ogerman based most of the pieces on famous classical themes (Sibelius, Rachmaninoff, Massenet), and Perez does an excellent job with the material, matching the mood and texture of his playing to its gorgeously contemplative tone. But all the same I'm looking forward to this visit, when he'll play with his longtime trio, bassist Ben Street and drummer Adam Cruz--there will be less between my ears and the full diapason of his genius.

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