Reverso, a new chamber jazz ensemble co-led by trombonist Ryan Keberle and pianist Frank Woeste, presents their new original work, “Suite Ravel”, in concert. “Suite Ravel” looks to bridge the divide between jazz and chamber music realized by an outstanding quartet which also includes the acclaimed cellist Erik Friedlander and drummer extraordinaire Adam Cruz. Not many composers have inspired jazz musicians as often or as intensely as Maurice Ravel, one of the first 20th century classical composers to acknowledge jazz as a valuable inspiration.

Keberle and Woeste show us that jazz and classical music have become even more intertwined in today’s music world while drawing particular inspiration from Ravel’s Le Tombeau de Couperindz, a suite for solo piano by Maurice Ravel, composed between 1914 and 1917, in six movements based on those of a traditional Baroque suite. Woeste and Keberle explore the classic six movement French Baroque suite working with the characteristic movements of the Prelude, Fugue, Forlane, Rigaudon, Menuet, and Toccata, re-defining these movements within their own unique compositional languages while sometimes incorporating Ravel’s original melodic, harmonic, and rhythmic material.

This project is supported by the French-American Jazz Exchange (FAJE), a program of FACE Foundation and Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation, in collaboration with the Cultural Services of the French Embassy.