Ryan Keberle

Trombonist Ryan Keberle is an adept soloist and composer whose work has straddled a diverse array of styles, touching upon modern creative jazz, classical, indie rock, and Latin traditions. A longtime member of Maria Schneider's Orchestra, Keberle initially garnered attention with his inventive Double Quartet, releasing a 2003 eponymous debut and 2010's Heavy Dreaming. He also leads the pianoless quartet Catharsis, who has released a handful of sophisticated, politically minded albums for Greenleaf Music, including 2014's In the Zone, 2017's Find the Common, Shine a Light, and 2019's The Hope I Hold. He has collaborated with pop artists like Sufjan Stevens, David Byrne, Alicia Keys, and South American composers such as Ivan Lins and Emilio Sola. Regularly splitting his time between Brazil and France, he leads the quartet Collectiv Do Brasil (2022's Sonhos da Esquina and 2023's Considerando) and the chamber jazz ensemble Reverso, with whom he has explored the music of French composers like Maurice Ravel (2018's Suite - Ravel), Gabriel Fauré (2022's Harmonic Alchemy), and Lili Boulanger (2024's Shooting Star - Étoile Filante). Born in 1980 in Bloomington, Indiana, Keberle grew up in a musical family with a father who played trumpet and taught music and a mother who played piano and worked as a church choir director. He initially started out on piano and also learned the violin through the Suzuki Method before settling on the trombone in the fifth grade. By his teens, he was augmenting his love for horn bands like Chicago, Blood, Sweat & Tears, and Tower of Power by playing along to jazz albums by John Coltrane and Dexter Gordon. He studied privately with David Matterne, the principal trombonist for the Spokane Symphony, and gained valuable early performance experience with the Spokane Youth Symphony, the Spokane Jazz Orchestra, and the Whitworth Jazz Ensemble. After high school, he double-majored in physics and music at Washington's Whitworth University before transferring to the Manhattan School of Music. There, he further honed his skill studying trombone with Steve Turre and composition with Michael Abene and Manny Albam. Following his graduation, he earned an artist diploma in Jazz Performance from Juilliard. Based in Brooklyn, he has performed with an array of artists and ensembles, including the David Berger Jazz Orchestra, Wynton Marsalis and Jazz at Lincoln Center, and the Maria Schneider Jazz Orchestra, among others. As a leader, he made his debut in 2003 with The Ryan Keberle Double Quartet and returned with 2010's Heavy Dreaming. In 2013, he released Music Is Emotion featuring Catharsis, a pianoless quartet with trumpeter Mike Rodriguez, bassist Jorge Roeder, and drummer Eric Doob. Along with touring as a member of singer/songwriter Sufjan Stevens' group, he has worked with such wide-ranging performers as Ivan Lins, David Bowie, Alicia Keys, and David Byrne. In 2014, Keberle released his second album with Catharsis, Into the Zone, on Dave Douglas' Greenleaf Music. It found him expanding the lineup with Chilean vocalist/guitarist Camila Meza. Meza was also on board for 2016's Azul Infinito, an album inspired by the trombonist's work with South American composers including Ivan Lins, Sebastian Cruz, and Samuel Torres. A third Catharsis album, Find the Common, Shine a Light, arrived the following year and found Keberle ruminating on the political turmoil in the United States. It was also around 2014 that he formed the international chamber jazz ensemble Reverso with German-born pianist Frank Woeste and French cellist Vincent Courtois. The group debuted in 2018 with Suite Ravel, which featured contributions by drummer Jeff Ballard and found them drawing inspiration from the music of composer Maurice Ravel. In 2019, he was back with Catharsis for another political-minded production, The Hope I Hold, whose title was inspired by a line from Langston Hughes' poem Let America Be America Again. A second Reverso album, Melodic Line, appeared in 2020 and was followed a year later by Live, a concert album recorded at Le Triton in Paris. Building upon a 2017 trip to São Paulo, Brazil, Keberle formed Collectiv do Brasil with pianist Felipe Silveira, bassist Thiago Alves, and drummer Paulinho Vicente. Drawing upon their shared love of artists like Toninho Horta and Milton Nascimento, they released Sonhos da Esquina in 2022. Also that year, Reverso returned with Harmonic Alchemy, an exploration of the music of Gabriel Fauré. A second Collectiv Do Brasil album, Considerando, arrived in 2023 and found the quartet digging into the work of Edu Lobo. French composer Lili Boulanger was the subject of Reverso's fifth album, Shooting Star - Étoile Filante.
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