ZohoMusic.com - Latin Jazz With A New York Vibe

A life-long music lover and accomplished pianist, esteemed law professor and classic late-bloomer Juan Perea has finally gotten around to making his recording debut at the age of 68. Now, with the release of Lightkeeper on the ZOHO label, Perea may henceforth be regarded as the hippest faculty member at Loyola University in Chicago.

In pursuing a career as a law professor while maintaining a playing interest in jazz, Perea is following the lead of West Coast pianist-composer Denny Zeitlin, a longtime touring and recording artist who is also a clinical professor of psychiatry at University of California, San Francisco. “Denny always gave me inspiration,” he said. “I once asked him, ‘How did you get so good at two things?’ And he said he never imagined not playing piano and not having it be a huge part of his life. And I think this is true for me also.”

Co-produced by keyboardist-composer-arranger George Whitty, who has toured and recorded with the Brecker Brothers, Herbie Hancock, Grover Washington, Jr., Dave Matthews, Santana, Celine Dion and Chaka Khan, Lightkeeper is a long-overdue statement from a man who has dedicated decades of his life to teaching law and preaching social justice while never losing that initial spark for music that consumed him from an early age.

On Perea’s auspicious debut, he is backed by an all-star crew including alto saxophonist Eric Marienthal (Chick Corea Elektric Band), bassist Jimmy Haslip (Yellowjackets), bassist Hadrien Feraud (Chick Corea, John McLaughlin’s 4th Dimension Band), bassist Janek Gwizdala (Randy Brecker, Mike Stern), drummer Tom Brechtlein (Chick Corea, Al Di Meola, Robben Ford & The Blue Line), percussionist Steve Thornton (Miles Davis, Marcus Miller) and veteran session bassist Gary Haase. The late guitar great Dean Brown (Brecker Brothers, Billy Cobham) also delivers several pulse-quickening solos in what turned out to be one of his final recordings.

The collection opens with a highly impressionistic take on Tito Puente’s 1962 cha-cha-cha Oye Como Va (famously interpreted as a Latin rock tune by Santana on 1970’s Abraxas). Lylestyle, an uplifting ode to one of Perea’s personal keyboard heroes, Lyle Mays (who died on February 10, 2020), features some of Juan’s most lyrical piano playing, augmented by signature Lyle Mays styled synth work during his long tenure with the Pat Metheny Group. This salute to Mays also features some remarkable electric bass playing and soloing by Hadrien Feraud. As Juan noted, “It seems to me the spirit of Jaco Pastorius lives on most prominently in Hadrien’s playing.”

El Sueño (The Dream) opens on an alluring note, with Perea on piano and synth, Brown on acoustic guitar, Haase on upright bass and Brechtlein supplying a subtle undercurrent with sensitive brushwork. Midway through they shift to an aggressive descarga fueled by Perea’s montuno vamp on piano and underscored by Brechtlein’s churning groove alongside Thornton’s percolating percussion. Guitarist Brown layers on some white-hot Carlos Santana-inspired electric guitar licks to elevate this jam before the piece builds to an orchestral climax, via layered synths, before settling back into the enchanting theme.

Tyner Tune is Perea’s dedication to another towering influence, pianist-composer McCoy Tyner. An intricate, metrically-shifting number (from a frantic drum ’n’ bass feel at the outset to a swing section and back), it features potent solos from Perea on piano, Marienthal on alto sax, Brown on guitar and Janek Gwizdala on electric bass. Brechtlein is also turned loose for a show-stopping drum solo near the end of this energized number. Perea mentioned that the swing section of this tune is a nod to McCoy’s early history. “I was surprised to learn, when I studied McCoy’s music more in-depth, how traditional a bebop player he was before he became famous after joining John Coltrane’s quartet. But he was a real master of that genre, so I tried to capture a little bit of both aspects of his playing-- the power and vocabulary that he developed with Trane and later in his career as well as the more traditional bebop or swing element that was part of his playing early on.”

Guitarist Brown dials up some nasty distortion for his electrified solo on the energetic City Swing, an upbeat cruisin’ number fueled by Jimmy Haslip’s electric bass groove and Brechtlein’s insistent backbeat. “That’s probably one of the last tunes that Dean did, sadly,” said Perea. “He went into the hospital right after that tune was done. When he emerged from the hospital a little later, he was trying to get his chops back, but he ended up leaving us on January 26, 2024.”