Dino Nugent and friends revisit the Ancon Theatre

by Eric Jackson

The night of Saturday, June 16 - the night before Fathers' Day - presented me with some tough choices. I could only be one place at a time, but simultaneously at the Gimnasio Roberto Duran there was a world championship boxing match, many of Panama's noted musicians of yesteryear (and the parents of some of today's notables) were playing at Magnum Eventos, Grupo Tuira was at the old Zaguan, and Dino Nugent was doing a jazz night benefit for the Theatre Guild of Ancon, at the Ancon Theatre. That's not to mention the interesting events going on in Colon and the interior that night. I chose to catch Dino Nugent's jazz septet, along with about 100 other people. Though I missed a bout wherein Pedro Alcázar became Panama's newest world champion pugilist, my choice was not disappointing.

The concert, produced by Gale Cellucci, was the last event of the Theatre Guild's 2000-2001 season. In addition to the hard work by a number of Guild members and friends and the patronage of those who showed up and bought tickets for the show, the event was made possible by the sponsorship of the Franklin Covey consulting firm, Llloyds TSB bank, The Wine Bar and the CB Fenton shipping agency.

Onstage, the night's musical lineup was band leader Dino Nugent on the electric piano (and at one point, a cowbell), Eusebio Dinza on the electric bass, drummer Markus Gilkes, percussionist Tony Martínez, Wichi López on trumpet and flugelhorn, Jorge Pinelo playing the saxophone and Gretchen Laffitte on flute and piccolo.

This was not Dino Nugent's first gig at the Ancon Theatre, nor the first benefit he played for the Theatre Guild. Between songs he extolled the virtues of the little wooden building, which seats but 140 people: "This small, intimate setting permits a better appreciation of music," he said, noting that in larger venues the spectacle of a concert tends to overshadow the music.

It's not that Nugent doesn't do spectacles in large venues. He does. In recent years his most memorable such performances were as musical director for the gala ATLAPA performance of Rubén Blades's Grammy-winning "La Rosa de Los Vientos" (he played keyboards on the record as well) and as the composer and director of most of the music at the August 1999 Panama Canal 85th anniversary gala at the Goethals Monument. Nugent does show tunes, most prominently on the local scene as the musical director for most of Bruce Quinn's shows, and lately as the composer of the score for "The Tailor of Panama" movie. The man is adept at many musical genres, but on this night he returned to the musicians' music, jazz.

Because Dino Nugent does so many different kinds of music in many different contexts, there isn't one particular band with which he is identified. On this night his jazz ensemble was a septet, though early on the word had been it would be a trio. Actually, players came and went onstage and though it was often a septet, throughout most of the show the constants were the trio of Nugent, drummer Markus Gilkes and bassist Eusebio Dinza. This, however, was no unstructured jam session. All of Panama's good musicians know Dino Nugent and his reputation, and most prize the possibility of working with him. Thus, though in New York and Los Angeles hardly anybody has heard of them, at the Ancon Theatre he was leading a selection of world-class artists, several of whom are the bright, shining stars in bands of their own.

Typically, in a jam session with a pick-up all-star jazz band, one hears a rotation of solos by the different performers. Nugent, however, is too meticulous a composer and conductor to be content with that easy style. Instead, the lead shifted among Nugent and the other musicians, typically several times in each number, with the rest of the band, or most of it, playing tightly and purposefully in the background throughout.

At the reception after the show, I spoke informally with a number of fans and the subject of who among the supporting cast impressed the most. Wichi López and Jorge Pinello were mentioned, but most of all it was Eusebio Dinza, the Cuban bassist who has lived in Panama for about six years, who earned the most raves. Though certain alleged labor leaders may argue that he's a foreigner taking work away from qualified Panamanians, Dinza is outstanding proof of how this country's professions are enhanced rather than degraded by the accretion of talent from abroad. It's hard to imagine Dinza not ending up in Europe, North America or other venues where talent such as his commands better pay than it does in Panama.

The night's program began with Keith Jarret's "Bop-Be," shifted into some Argentine blues, touched Gershwin's canonical "Summertime" and ended with the classic "Watermelon Man" as an encore, but half of the numbers were Dino Nugent's compositions, several of them new. Suitably for a gig two nights after the Panama premiere of "The Tailor of Panama," one of these Nugent originals was "Danzón del Sastre," from the movie's score.

The first Nugent tune of the night, "Rapsodia," was the third number of the first set, for which Gretchen Laffitte and Tony Martínez stepped onstage for the first time that night. Before that, Dino expounded on the joys of composing, and how he loves and draws upon so many different musical styles. The number began with Nugent going heavy on the piano jazz dissonance, then straightened out and evolved into a long jam with Laffitte and Dinza playing a dual lead on flute and bass. Then Wichi picked up his flugelhorn and took the lead, after which he traded back to his trumpet and Gretchen grabbed her piccolo while Dino jammed, leading alone, then in combination with Wichi's trumpet, then as a dual lead with Jorge's sax. The pace shifted from fast to slow, and the direction from out there to straight ahead, several times throughout the number. Such was the complex style for most of the evening.

On the next number, Cuban Chuchu Valdéz's "Claudia," the 1950s cool jazz movement came to mind and Wichi López showed just how cool a flugelhorn can be.

The first set ended with a couple more Nugent compositions, "Romanza" and "Remembranza." The former began and ended with a very classical sound, and featured an amazingly tight and complex bass pattern in between. The latter sounded Brazilian, and Nugent attributed it to the influences aquired during his days as a student of composition and conducting at Brazil's Federal University of Minas Gerais.

When one thinks of "Latin jazz," one feature that comes to mind is the overlay of African and Caribbean percussion influences onto a genre created by African-Americans. The band's percussion section lived up to this reputation in the second set, wherein Tony Martínez started off with a conga solo that melded into Gershwin's "Summertime," a la Latina, with Dino taking it off onto piano tangents and Wichi leading it back toward George and Ira's original.

The second set concluded with Nugent's air from "The Tailor of Panama" and his "Ebididon, the latter again with a strong Latin percussion part, including Dino banging on a cowbell and Eusebio playing his electric bass as something of a percussion instrument.

The night, and the Theatre Guild's season, ended with an encore of "Watermelon Man," which gave Dino a chance to show off once more on the piano, and Wichi and Jorge taking their equal opportunities to do likewise on flugelhorn and sax.

Against stiff competition from several other compelling events, the Ancon Theatre was filled to two-thirds of its capacity. Though that may have been slightly disappointing from a financial point of view, the season finale upheld Panama's English-language theater's reputation as a center of sophisticated good taste. Surely there's more to come in the years ahead.