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This has been an intense week for international piano star Danilo Perez and his wife and music therapist Patricia Perez. Fundación Danilo Perez has not only launched the next Panama Jazz Festival 2010, but also announced their program Music For Change... and received an award from the Smithsonian Institute in Washington for all the work he´s been doing in Panama with children.  He was also appointed artistic director at the Global Institute of Jazz of Berklee College of Music in Boston, USA. Danilo and Patricia are all about positive energy.

Their passion is simple and deep: to raise the level of music education in Panama and transform through it the lives of children at social risk. The jazz festival is only a platform to achieve this goal, but what a platform! Last year, close to 20,000 people enjoyed the festival. About 650 students went to the clinics, scholarships where given, for a week, Panama was turned into a Cultural Hub.

For Danilo, Panama is the perfect spot to nurture jazz. With an almost caleidoscopic culture, where all continents have met historically, music comes naturally and the raw material he has found has been impresive. Last night, we witnessed just a small piece of his amazing job. A band made of Panamanian students composed by a young kuna indian (piano), and young men from the poorest areas in Panama (Chorrillo, Alcalde Díaz ) and a Costa Rican piano student. They where a blast!  presented original pieces created by them based on Panamanian folk music but taking wonderful and alternative routes.  Also took some classic pieces and tied them up into an explosion of their own.

Danilo, throught the Danilo Perez Foundation wants to replicate this success through their jazz school in Casco Viejo. They already started classes, and students have come from everywhere, specially the most fragile areas. As Danilo often says: "music is love, and you can´t escape from love. We are going to vaccinate everyone with the medicine of love and positivism".

To learn more about it, contact the Fundación Danilo Perez HERE



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ItYojxzP4no At the Music Conservatory, hosting a press conference to announce the Jazz Fest 2010