BERKLEE | Press Release

Danilo Perez Big Band to Perform New Year's Eve for NPR's Toast of the Nation

November 14, 2007

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Danilo Perez

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This New Year's Eve, the Danilo Perez Big Band will be heard live, coast to coast and around the world, from Berklee College of Music's intimate David Friend Recital Hall as part of NPR's Toast of the Nation live jazz broadcast.

The broadcast will be the radio premiere of The Panama Suite, a sprawling, earthy work Perez has composed in celebration of his native Panama. A new recording of the suite will be released in January by Berklee, and will first be available for sale at the Panama Jazz Festival, which Perez founded in 2003. All proceeds of the festival, and the recording, will go to the Danilo Perez Foundation to provide educational programs in Panama throughout the year.

Toast of the Nation—heard on more than 200 NPR affiliates in the U.S., and around the world—is produced for NPR by WBGO-FM, Newark. WGBH 89.7 will produce the Boston broadcast featuring Perez as part of NPR's international broadcast. The Boston hour will be hosted by WGBH 89.7's Eric Jackson, now in his 26th year on "Eric in the Evening."

Danilo Perez, Panamanian-born jazz pianist/composer is both a Grammy winner and a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador. A 1988 Berklee graduate in jazz composition, Perez has led his own bands to worldwide critical and popular acclaim while collaborating with some of the greatest musicians of our time, including Dizzy Gillespie, Wayne Shorter, Roy Haynes, Tito Puente, and Steve Lacy, to name a few.

The Panama Suite is a three-movement composition that combines urban sounds with Panamanian folkloric elements to celebrate Perez's homeland. Joining the band from Panama for the broadcast will be 11-year-old hand percussion phenomenon Milagros Blades and Berklee College of Music Presidential Scholar Jahaziel Arrocha on tenor saxophone. Both the recording and live performance of the suite have been brought to life through a collaboration between some of Berklee's and New England Conservatory's finest faculty and student players, including Jeff Galindo, Patricia Zarate, Francisco Molina, Jason Camelio, Petr Cancura, Sean Berry, Daniel Blake, John Replogle, and Gabriel Guerrero.

The Boston portion of the broadcast will be performed and heard from 8:00-9:00 pm Eastern time, Monday, December 31. Toast of the Nation will air on NPR Worldwide and around the world for U.S. servicemen and women on American Forces Network radio, as well as worldwide on the Internet, from NPR's new music site.

The performance will be in an intimate club setting at Berklee; seating is extremely limited. The price is $75 for one ticket, $150 for a pair, and $300 for a table of four. The offer includes membership in the WGBH Jazz Club, and in the station's Leadership Circle at the $300 level. Light Panamanian-themed dinner, drinks, and the group's The Panama Suite CD, are all included. Perez and the band will also meet with audience members and sign CDs, after the show. Please call WGBH at 888 897-9424 to reserve seats.

This year's Toast of the Nation broadcast begins with Perez and his big band at Berklee, then moves to the Kennedy Center in Washington, where vocalist Patti Austin will perform. New York is next, with the Brazilian feel of Trio da Paz. Nachito Herrera follows, from Minneapolis's Dakota Club, with a tribute to Earth Wind and Fire. At midnight Eastern time it's the Count Basie Orchestra and vocalist Ledisi, from the new Yoshi's San Francisco. Then Perez and the Panama Suite band at Berklee will be rebroadcast for listeners in the western time zones following the Basie band set at Yoshi's.

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Danilo Perez Big Band to Perform New Year's Eve for NPR's Toast of the Nation