It’s amazing how versatile the trombone is, and can be, and will continue to be,” Ryan Keberle said about the state of his instrument circa 2022. “Trombone is achieving new heights from a technical standpoint, doing things no one thought possible 30 years ago.”
The 41-year-old maestro had just endured his first Before & After, comprising primarily Brazilian music played by fellow practitioners, in line with his latest album, Sonhos da Esquina, a meditation on the tonal personalities of Toninho Horta and Milton Nascimento recorded in 2017 with Collectiv do Brasil, featuring a rhythm section from São Paulo. It’s one of Keberle’s several units, which include the chordless ensemble Catharsis—whose sixth and most recent album, 2019’s The Hope I Hold (Greenleaf), incorporates Chilean singer/guitarist Camila Meza’s wordless vocals—and Reverso, a dynamic chamber group (most recently documented on Live [OutNote]) that he co-leads with French pianist Frank Woeste and cellist Vincent Courtois.
Earlier in the session, Keberle remarked, “I made a career for over a decade playing every style in New York and trying to do it authentically.” He was referencing his steady presence on albums and gigs by the orchestras of Maria Schneider, Darcy James Argue, and Ryan Truesdell’s Gil Evans Project; Emilio Solla y la Inestable de Brooklyn, Pedro Giraudo; and various other top-flight pan-American ensembles, as well as various luminaries in pop and classical worlds.
“We function in many different musical languages,” Keberle said, describing a large portion of the trombone tribe. “It takes someone with an extremely open mind, who’s attracted to learning all these different languages—because obviously that’s not easy to do. It takes someone with the deepest ability to listen critically and get at
