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Danilo Pérez Receives Grammy Nomination For Mack Avenue Records Debut, Providencia

Danilo Pérez's debut Mack Avenue Records release, Providencia, has been nominated for a 2011 Grammy Award in the category of "Best Jazz Instrumental Album." The Grammy nomination is the acclaimed Panamanian pianist, educator and social activist's first as a leader since his groundbreaking Verve release, Motherland (2000).

Fatherhood changes everyone; for pianist/composer Danilo Pérez, the birth of his two young daughters threw down a gauntlet of sorts, a challenge to provide a better world for the girls to grow up in. "What are you doing so we can have a healthy life in the future?" he imagined them asking. "What are you adults leaving us?"

On a practical level, Pérez has been working busily to answer that question both in his native Panama and his adopted home of Boston. His annual Panama Jazz Festival has brought world-renowned musicians to the country for the last seven years, not only to perform but also to work closely with local youth. That mission is carried on yearlong by the Fundación Danilo Pérez, which offers musical and cultural education to disadvantaged young people in Panama City. In Boston, he now heads the Berklee Global Jazz Institute, which offers music students an opportunity to explore creativity, advance the social power of music, and connect music with the restoration of ecology and humanity. These efforts are in addition to his activities as a member of Wayne Shorter's acclaimed quartet.

Providencia is an attempt to provide a complementary musical answer to the same question. "This record is based on the idea that whatever we do has an impact in the universe," Pérez says. "The word 'providence,' for me, means standing up for the future of the next generation of children."

That may sound like a tall order for any art form to fulfill, but Pérez has an expansive view of music's power and reach, expressed not only in his goals for the album but in its diverse palette and broad scope. Providencia crosses streams of jazz, classical and Latin American folk music-which Pérez refers to as "hearing music in three dimensions."

The ensemble Pérez has assembled for this album is itself an expression of his concept of "global jazz," an idea he carries on from his stint with the legendary Dizzy Gillespie's United Nations Orchestra. Alongside the Panamanian leader, the group includes his trio, Indian-American saxophonist Rudresh Mahanthappa, Lebanese-American percussionist Jamey Haddad, Colombian conga player Ernesto Diaz, Portuguese vocalist Sara Serpa and a Boston-based woodwind quintet.

Pérez ultimately reflects on an answer to the questions he imagines his daughters posing: "The future will be a reflection of what we say, think and do today. Let's use wisdom and our art of providence as a flashlight to guide us to the restoration of humanity."