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Scenes from the Panama Jazz Festival, the first night
Scenes from the Panama Jazz Festival, the second night
Scenes from the Panama Jazz Festival, the third night
Scenes from the Panama Jazz Festival, the free concert

The new San Carlos arts center starts with a little party
Boquete Jazz Festival coming up
Gallery & Museum Guide

Out in the hall before the show, London native and New York resident Wayne Batchelor (right) admires Dan Greenspan's bass and answers questions about playing techniques by Tony Madruga, a talented young piano player of Cuban extraction who lives in Miami.

Scenes from night two of the Panama Jazz Festival

photos, in some cases electronically altered, by Eric Jackson

This year's festival is dedicated to the late Barbara Wilson, and maybe not coincidentally was strong on female jazz vocalists. Panama's Patricia Vlieg opened the night as a special guest soloist with the Panamerican Big Band, which included students from the University of Panama, the Berklee College of Music and the New England Conservatory and was partly directed by veteran Panamanian trumpeter Vitín Paz and partly by New England Conservatory jazz professor Ken Schaphorst.

Dan Greenspan showed how it's done with that 200-year-old bass that Wayne Batchelor was trying out in the hall. He was the gringo part of an international tribute to Chile that featured Chilean saxophonist Patricia Zárate and drummer Pancho Molina (the latter better known from the rock genre, where he plays with Los Tres), Mexican vocalist Mili Bermejo and Uruguayan pianist Nando Michelin.

Bermejo, who was born in Argentina and raised in Mexico and

now teaches at Berklee, was the night's second notable jazz diva

Nando Michelin under the bright lights

The night's closing act was Edmar Castañeda,

a Colombian who plays jazz on the harp

Taking nothing at all away from Castañeda's prodigious talent,

trombone player Marshall Gilkes --- a student at Julliard in

New York --- was every bit as amazing as the band leader

Then Andrea Tierra, who's married to Castañeda, came out to

make the trio a quartet and, singing in a genre that mixes jazz

with Colombian traditional forms, proved to be the evening's

third outanding female vocalist and a great crowd pleaser

Scenes from the Panama Jazz Festival, the first night
Scenes from the Panama Jazz Festival, the second night
Scenes from the Panama Jazz Festival, the third night
Scenes from the Panama Jazz Festival, the free concert