Despite his flamboyant character, the young Panamanian pianist Danilo Perez has been happy to share the limelight with jazz giants such as Dizzy Gillespie and Roy Haynes. For these leaders, Perez has often played a supportive rhythmic and harmonic role. But he is unleashing his full formidable talent at Pizza Express this week. He is aided by the eloquent young bassist Carlos Henriquez (whose long sonorities and flamenco-like strumming sometimes recall Charlie Haden) and the tireless and resourceful drummer Antonio Sanchez.
Adapting to Perez's fondness for frequent tempo changes (also a habit of Chick Corea's, and one that can lose its fascination in large doses), Sanchez's playing is a fascinating mixture of power and minimalism. He stitched together a rich rhythmic tapestry out of fragments of many drum techniques. Straightahead cymbal beats were delivered only in glimpses, flickering tom-tom accents surfaced and van ished, short bursts of Latin hand-drumming suddenly turned to furious polyrhythmic thrashes. Sanchez wound up Perez's third tune on Tuesday with just such a dazzling display, and threw in a simultaneous hi-hat and pedal- powered cowbell counter-rhythm for good measure. The tension between Sanchez's drumming and the pianist's swerves toward and away from the beat was at the centre of the band's appeal.
Perez's trio played a single unbroken set, which enabled the music to take on a coherent shape, its textures characteristically uniting Panamanian influences and the jazz mainstream. Folksy accordion-like music played on a blown mini-keyboard gave way to fast Latin rumbles, with Perez's long, bold bar-jumping lines imparting freshness to these familiar idioms. This time, the pianist's frequent tributes to Thelonious Monk were represented by Think of One. Perez hid the theme for a long time, then slipped it in and out of an exclamatory Latin groove, ending with an explosive three-way collective blast.
The intensity gave way to a piano tone-poem devoted to Panama. This would have been exquisite as mimicry of birdcalls and street dances, but turned instead into You Don't Know What Love Is. But this is a fine, cooperative band, giving everything it knows.
