Wayne Shorter, Rubén Blades, and the Cuban pianist Chucho Valdés will be among the performers at the sixth annual Panama Jazz Festival, which begins Jan. 12 and continues through Jan. 17.
The presence of Shorter’s remarkable quartet on the Panama bill is hardly surprising, since the pianist in that group is Danilo Pérez, a native of Panama who founded the festival and whose foundation coordinates its educational activities. Nonetheless, it has to be considered a coup for a festival, and a country, that don’t always get a lot of attention.
“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,” Pérez said in a statement. “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.”
(Pérez has also been highly visible in New York lately. He took part in Shorter’s gala 75th-birthday concert at Carnegie Hall on Dec. 2; less than two weeks earlier, he triumphantly led his own trio at Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Thelonious Monk festival.)
Blades’s presence (as a guest with a group led by his wife, singer Luba Mason) also makes perfect sense. He is not only Panama’s best-known musician, he is also the country’s minister of culture.
In addition to presenting six days and nights of music, the festival will include auditions for admission and scholarships to the New England Conservatory, the Berklee College of Music, and the Conservatorio de Puerto Rico. There will also be workshops conducted by the New England Conservatory Ensemble and master classes in both music and music technology offered by Berklee professors.
The 2009 Panama Jazz Festival is dedicated to the memory of Clarence Martin Sr., a bassist, composer, and arranger well known in Panama for his contributions to the jazz scene there.
A complete schedule of musical and educational events, and information about festival travel packages, should be available soon at panamajazzfestival.com.
