Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Danilo Pérez was born on December 29, 1965 in Panama and started his musical training at 3 years old on bongos with his father Danilo Sr., a professional bandleader and singer. By age 10 he was studying the European Classical Piano repertoire at the National Conservatory in Panama, eventually transferring to the Berklee College of Music to study Jazz composition.

During the yeas 1985 to ’88 while at Berklee, Danilo played with Jon Hendricks, Terence Blanchard, Claudio Roditi and Paquito D’Rivera. He would go on to tour Poland in ’95 and play the Summer Olympics in Atlanta in ‘96 with Wynton Marsalis, be a part of the Grammy winning album Danzon, perform at President Clinton’s Inaugural Ball and played piano on the Bill Cosby theme song.

Perez has had the fortune to play and record with such luminaries as Charlie Haden, Michael Brecker, Jack DeJohnette, Dizzy Gillespie, Tito Puente, Joe Lovano, Gary Burton, Wayne Shorter, Tom Harrell, Roy Haynes, Steve Lacy and many others.

Pianist and composer Danilo Perez, whose primary influence of style and thought was Dizzy Gillespie, but as a child gleaned from the recordings the styles of Gershwin, Ellington, Coltrane and Monk. He has recorded over a dozen albums, served as a professor at the New England Conservatory of Music, and serves as the artistic director of the Berklee College of Music Global Jazz Institute.

Dose A Day – Blues Away

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