The festival also provided two excellent avatars of the African musical diaspora in Latin jazz. Panamanian pianist-composer Pérez—a superbly mentored musician who worked with Dizzy Gillespie and has been a member of Wayne Shorter’s quartet for nearly 20 years—brought his Panama-centered “global jazz” to the stage with longtime cohorts drummer Adam Cruz and bassist Ben Street. Buoyed by Cruz’s Latin pulsations and Street’s anchoring basslines, Perez’s “Panama 500” danced with his country’s Afro-indigenous dance rhythms, and his centennial shout-out to Thelonious Monk featured riveting renditions of “Evidence,” “Think Of One” and “’Round Midnight.” Click here to read the full article.