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.
