"2015 marks my twenty-second year living in New York City, and I left my hometown when I was twenty-two years old," he says. "I remembered the exact moment when I moved, and the feelings I had had at the time…especially during the last two days in Caracas and the first two days in New York City. There again, I saw the two and two formula, and realized that there was a little recurring theme there. So I began scoring all of those memories and trying to convey them through music: translating some dates that were very significant to me into notes."

Perdomo's lyrical and logical pianism embodies Bud Powell's bop-at-the-speed-ofswing, Oscar Peterson's technical brilliance, and Ahmad Jamal's melodic genius. And his numbers-into-notes compositional technique, which he learned from Richard DeRosa, an instructor from his Alma Mater, the Manhattan School of Music, forms the basis of two songs: "Cota Mil" a funky, labyrinthine, Patanemo-grooved number named after a prominent highway north of Caracas, which derives its compositional motifs from the dates of the Venezuelan Battle of Independence in 1821 and the Batalla de la Juventud/Battle of the Youth in 1814. The martial, "Days Gone Days Ahead," was inspired by the day Perdomo got his US Student Visa on 8/13/93.

The rest of the CDs tracks showcase the infinite variety of Perdomos musicality. "Love Tone Poem" is a wistful, 5/4-metered ballad dedicated to Jones, and "Two Sides of a Goodbye” is a funereal, avant-garde work that conjures up Perdomo's melancholy when he left his family at the airport in Venezuela. In contrast, "Old City" is an uptempo sound portrait of an the un-gentrified Manhattan of the early nineties, where jazz clubs like Bradley's, The Village Gate, Fat Tuesday's and Sweet Basil's reigned supreme. Perdomo's evocative sound on the Fender Rhodes is also featured on the bouncy backbeat of "A Different Kind of Reality," the contrapuntal "Light Slips In," "Brand New Grays," and the funkified "Looking Through You."

Two tracks, "Weilheim (to Gerry Weil)" a reverent mid-tempo piece dedicated to Perdomo's first teacher, the Austrian-born jazz pianist/educator Gerry Weil, and "Aaychdee (to Harold Danko)" – named after jazz Danko's publishing company," are Perdomo's sonic shout-outs to his former piano teachers. "The biggest lesson I received from Gerry Weil in Venezuela, was to keep my mind open to all types of music," he says. "With Harold (who was his instructor at MSM), that was the first time I actually heard jazz from an American point-of-view. That was a total revelation to me."

Born in 1971 in Caracas, Perdomo, from the age of 12, was playing on Venezuelan TV and radio stations, but he eventually realized that he would have to travel to New York City to fulfill his musical destiny. "Being in a more competitive and challenging environment was a big change that I welcomed," he says.

In 1993, Perdomo relocated to New York and enrolled with a full scholarship to the Manhattan School of Music, where he studied with Harold Danko and classical pianist Martha Pestalozzi, and earned his earned his BA Degree in 1997. Perdomo later studied with pianist extraordinaire, Sir Roland Hanna at Queens College, and received his Masters Degree in 2000. "Studying with Sir Roland Hanna . . . "I began to look at jazz and classical music in a new and more in-depth way and my playing evolved accordingly," he says. Perdomo has appeared on over two hundred records, and has become a first-class sideman to artists like Dave Douglas, David Sanchez, Tom Harrell, Steve Turre, Ben Wolfe, Ray Barretto, Brian Lynch, David Gilmore, Conrad Herwig, Ignacio Berroa, Ralph Irizarry and Timbalaye and other great musicians. He was a member of Ravi Coltrane’s Quartet for ten years, and is a founding member of the Miguel Zenon Quartet. Perdomo recorded on three Grammy-nominated CD's: Coltrane's Influx, and Zenon's Esta Plena, and Alma Adentro: The Puerto Rican Songbook.

Perdomo's recordings as a leader include: Focus Point (2005), Awareness (2006), Pathways (2008), the critically-acclaimed Universal Mind (2012), with Jack DeJohnnette and Drew Gress, The Infancia Project (2012) and Links (2013).

Which brings us to 22: an amazing recording that shows how far Luis Perdomo has come and forecasts where he is going.

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