Diana Perez
Dr. Madelaine Paschal
“In a world where you can be anything, be kind.” Simple, clear, meaningful… because that very thing, being kind, is how she lives her life.
I have known Diana Perez, of her, I should say, for many years. Her reputation preceded her. I had heard that she always smiled as soon as she saw you and didn’t quit smiling until long after you had left her presence. I heard that her sweet spirit made the room light up as she entered it. They said she made people happy just to look at her. But mainly they said, when she played a piano and sang in her lovely, controlled voice, you smiled and didn’t stop smiling until long after her beautiful music had ended.
That is Diana Perez, the vocalist who learned to “belt it out” from a vocal coach at the Aurora Conservatory of Music in Colorado where she was told she had a gift and should discover the joys of using it. And she did just that… for over 20 years in Chicago and then all over the United States with a 16-piece orchestra behind her. But until she had married, taught science for over 30 years and raised her two children, did the hope of singing by herself with her own band and then combo enter her thoughts. After learning the keyboards at the age of 40, her life took another turn, and Diana began to be booked all over the Southwest in large ballrooms, small venues… and the Playboy Club! Diana was in demand as she continued fine-tuning her voice and piano concerts… and her dance card is still filled up, as she continues to gain her “senior” footing and claim her “senior” stardom.
You see, for Diana, every performance, every song and every venue is better than the one before. Her level of calm, her arena of carefully-chosen songs and her ability to bring her audience into her “space” colors her melodies and claims the hearts of everyone who is lucky enough to hear her. Diana is the entertainer who chooses her music for her audience and then lets the melodies transform the listeners. They often tell her how a song has made them remember, go back in time and linger over long-forgotten memories.
Diana Perez, a rare beauty in her youth and now even more so in her senior years, credits her happy marriage, her wonderful children and grandchildren and her audiences for all that is good about her and in her. But, we know that you make your own happiness and then everything else in your life falls into place, and hers has… good, and blessed, and positive and all because she chose to be KIND… and it has worked.
If you have the chance to hear Diana singing and playing in the Sun Lakes/Ocotillo area of Chandler, Arizona, take it! And tell her I sent you!