JAZZ

Afro-Caribbean concert infuses the audience with Latin rhythms

By Howard Reich
Tribune arts critic
Published July 30, 2005

With an estimated 10,000 listeners swaying freely, Millennium Park's new jazz series not only broke attendance records Thursday evening but made musical history of sorts, as well.

For starters, the Afro-Caribbean concert was recorded live for a limited-edition, two-CD set that will be released in September (copies can be ordered at www.chicagojazzdiscs.com ).

More important, the recording will document an unprecedented, concert-length collaboration among Panamanian pianist Danilo Perez, his father -- the estimable singer Danilo Perez Sr. -- and Chicago's Grammy-nominated 911 Mambo Orchestra, headed by bandleader Angel Melendez.

For those who value Latin facets of large-ensemble jazz, with its beguiling merger of populist song forms and ultra-sophisticated instrumental improvisation, the evening represented an artistic high point. Despite the outdoor setting, which can lead to a nonchalant approach to music making, the performers offered some of the most probing, intellectually substantial explorations of Cuban and Central American repertoire one might hope to hear.

At the same time, though, the dance rhythms that drove most of the music making made the concert accessible to anyone who preferred simply to ride the seductively undulating backbeats. It's a pity, though, that concertgoers were barred from dancing in the aisles.

Surprisingly, the most glorious moment in an evening filled with them was owed not to the small army of musicians gathered on stage but to two men performing as a duo -- Danilo Perez Sr. and Jr.

Though each stands as a figure of considerable musical achievement, few listeners outside Panama have encountered the distinctly gravelly, passionately imploring vocals of Perez Sr. Nor have many heard pere Perez and his gifted son in such close musical proximity.

But with nary an introduction, the pianist began unfurling radically unorthodox chords laced with dissonance, while his father sang perhaps the most revered of Latin love songs, "Besame Mucho." The introduction alone proved mesmerizing, the father singing extraordinarily slowly, stretching the famous melody line practically to the breaking point.

Only a top-notch vocalist could summon such operatic intensity, lingering sweetly on high notes, dipping dramatically to low ones, caressing every syllable "as if this night were for the last time," as the song lyric itself suggests. Can there be any doubt that father and son ought to record a duo album?

Before long, Melendez's 911 Mambo Orchestra weighed in with the plush orchestration well known from its self-titled debut CD, the partnership of the two Perezes and the great band producing as rapturous a "Besame Mucho" as anyone is playing these days.

In purely instrumental music, the evening's climax came with the world premiere of pianist Perez's "Panama Suite," penned for the occasion and bearing the thoroughly apt subtitle "Quiero Amanecer" (which roughly translates as "I Like to Stay Up Until Sunrise").

Despite the picturesque title, however, the three-part suite represented big-band writing of the most demanding sort, its ferocious syncopations, up-to-the-minute harmonies and crisp, inter-ensemble dialogues a test of any band's mettle. Ever eager to win over a crowd, Perez concluded the piece with call-and-response passages involving the audience. His impromptu Chicago choir gave him precisely the lusty vocals he urged.

Practically everyone was abuzz over the Chicago debut of the 9-year-old drummer Milagros Blades, who duetted with her accomplished teacher, the Panamanian percussionist-scholar Ricaurte Villareal. If she didn't get as much of a chance to stretch out as she had during the Panama Jazz Festival, in January, she nevertheless provided a combination of rhythmic surge and technical precision well beyond her years.