VI Panama Jazz Festival to be dedicated to Clarence Martin

Cuban pianist Chucho Valdés, doing "Son N° 1" here, will be one of the headliners

Jazz world to converge on Panama next January 12 - 17

VI Panama Jazz Festival to be dedicated to composer / bassman Clarence Martin Sr.
by Eric Jackson

At an August 25 press conference renowned Panamanian pianist and composer Danilo Pérez Jr. announced that the 2009 version of the Panama Jazz Festival will be held January 12 - 17, 2009, with an educational mission expanding again this year and the workshops and auditions moving to Panama Canal Authority facilities in Balboa.

This past January's festival featured four educational institutions, the founding New England Conservatory and Berklee College of Music, and added the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz Performance, a small elite graduate program based at Loyola University in New Orleans, the International Association for Jazz Education and the Conservatorio de Musica de Puerto Rico, all of which played various roles, not all of them seen onstage. Pérez said that the educational institutions participating will be "basically the same as before," and added that Oberlin and Miami University are also expressing interest but that the extent of each institution's participation in a given year is largely a function of the budget that's available for that purpose. Typically some of the institutions send advanced student bands, as the New England Conservatory and the Thelonious Monk Institute did this past January, and those and others also send professors who, along with some of the featured musicians, give workshops and hold auditions. One of the main draws for the jazz festivals is that young musicians from Panama and other Latin American countries are attracted to the workshops and auditions, all of them to improve their musicianship and some in search of scholarships or school admissions that might be won at the auditions.

The workshops have always been mainly oriented toward musicians but the scope of the festival's educational mission expanded early on into recording seminars and last year featured a session on the business of music, for musicians. This year's workshops, to be held January 12 - 16, will again include sessions on the business end of music and will also for the first time include dance workshops and a seminar for the cultural press in musical journalism.

Danilo Pérez and Acting Mayor Ivan Arrocha. Noting the jazz festival's importance as a tourist attraction and Casco Viejo neighborhood event, Arrocha opined that more than anything else "this is for the Panamanian musicians." Photo by Eric Jackson

The coming festival will be dedicated to bass player, composer and arranger Clarence Martin Sr., one of the historic figures of the Panamanian jazz scene starting in the 1940s, whose work directly affected several generations of musicians. Sitting in the front row at the press conference was trumpeter Vitín Paz, one of Martin's band mates and fans in decades gone by, and now the head of the University of Panama's big band project. Paz told The Panama News that whether or not the University of Panama plays an official role in the festival, he's always personally involved.

That part of the jazz festival that most of the fans know about and see, the performances, happen between January 14 and 17. There will be the fundraising gala in the ornate and acoustically excellent Teatro Nacional on January 14, two nights of music at the ATLAPA convention center on January 15 and 16, and, as in the past, a concluding all-day and late into the night free concert featuring all of the festival's many musicians at Parque Catedral in the Casco Viejo.

(You folks from temperate climes who are already making your travel arrangements for the festival shouldn't forget your sunscreen and hats if you're going to be in the park that afternoon --- the sun can get brutal.)

Backdrop to the free concert. Photo by Eric Jackson

The shows are what bring in the visitors and bring Panama's jazz fans out of the woodwork, as you might understand from listening to and watching the videos above. But it really is one of the ways that Pérez, who has enjoyed great success in music as a performing and recording artist and as an educator, gives something back to Panama, the world and a younger generation. But although they call it the Danilo Pérez Foundation, it's hardly his effort alone. Businesses and embassies pitch in with financial and in-kind support, and so do individuals. Pérez pointed out, for example, that some of the 21 kids studying on scholarships granted during jazz festivals past needed to learn English to take advantage of their opportunities, and that people stepped forward and volunteered to tutor them so that they could overcome the language barrier. People with help of any sort to offer to the festival or to the young musicians should contact the foundation.

Musicians Vitín Paz, left, and Reggie Boyce, in the blue shirt. Photo by Eric Jackson

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