Bio:
Hailed in Downbeat International Critics Poll as #1 Rising Star trombonist, a player “of vision and composure” according to The New York Times, Ryan Keberle has developed a one-of-a-kind voice both on his instrument and as a composer, earning distinction among jazz’s most adventurous new voices. Keberle’s music integrates his wide-ranging experiences into a highly personal vernacular — immersed in jazz tradition, drawing on world music, rock and other influences, seeking fresh and original pathways. His flagship ensemble, Catharsis, has released five albums, three on Dave Douglas’s Greenleaf Music record label, to worldwide critical acclaim.
In 2017 Catharis turned its attention to political turmoil in the U.S. with the protest album Find the Common, Shine a Light, praised by The Nation as “unpretentiously intelligent and profoundly moving.”
Keberle has also worked in endlessly varied settings with musicians ranging from superstars to up-and-coming innovators, in jazz, indie rock, R&B and classical music. As a featured soloist with the Maria Schneider Orchestra, he collaborated with David Bowie on his 2015 single “Sue (Or in a Season of Crime).” He has performed extensively with the acclaimed songwriter Sufjan Stevens, with Brazilian superstar Ivan Lins, and with the Saturday Night Live house band. He has accompanied soul hit-makers Alicia Keys and Justin Timberlake as well as jazz legends Rufus Reid and Wynton Marsalis.
Quotes, Notes & Etc.
“A young trombonist of vision and composure…with far-ranging credential, Ryan Keberle is onto something with Catharsis, his update of a pianoless postbop quartet…There's heart and soul in Mr. Keberle’s tunes”
– Nate Chinen, NY Times
“Ryan Keberle and Catharsis prove why they are one of the most progressive bands in modern jazz.”
– Will Layman, PopMatters
“the songs swell and recede in a graceful way reminiscent of the Maria Schneider Orchestra. Wordless vocals, lyrics and solos emerge from gorgeous weaves of musical textures.”
– Martin Johnson, Wall Street Journal
“The hope I hold is that Keberle and Catharsis will make more such optimistic and provocative music.”
– J.D. Considine, JazzTimes
“a powerful work that brings in new interpretations of popular song as well as originals that breathe and seethe on our behalf.”
– Paste Magazine
“a mix of barbed yet beauteous originals and covers of enduring protest songs.”
– Down Beat
“unpretentiously intelligent and profoundly moving.”
– The Nation
“a potent blend of cinematic sweep and lush, ear-grabbing melodies.”
– Chris Barton, LA TIMES
“5 new jazz albums you need to hear…inventive, fun, and polished — and never self-indulgent (a jazz rarity)”
– Billboard
“Rooted in tradition, yet stretched inside-out and upside-down enough so that it’s a whole ‘nother animal, making it a fusion of the best sort.”
– Classicalite
“Ryan Keberle is one of the hottest names in jazz trombone… His own group, Catharsis, is a powerful ‘chordless’ quintet of similarly sought-after musicians”
– The Irish Times
“accessible and thoughtful, lyrical and cerebral…Keberle and his bandmates weave their voices together with supple ease and understated grace to conjure a collective sound that embraces the listener while rewarding closer attention.”
– Shaun Brady, Downbeat
“The jazz world truly needs more musicians like Ryan Keberle, a supremely gifted artist who’s willing and eager to prioritize emotion and humanity over ivory tower jazz intellectualism.”
– Daniel Bilawsky, All About Jazz
“In the last few years [Keberle has] seriously stepped out on his own, creating warm small-group music that’s front-loaded with melody; there’s also plenty of harmonic movement, but his remarkable rapport with trumpeter Mike Rodriguez never lets technique get in the way of tunefulness.”
– Peter Margasak, Chicago Reader
“Trombonist and composer Ryan Keberle’s album Music Is Emotion (Alternate Side Records) introduces his piano-less quartet Catharsis and a sound so full of imaginative interplay and boundless energy that the band seems much larger”
– Thomas Staudter, Downbeat
“In forming Catharsis, a piano-less quartet with two horns, bass and drums, Keberle left his self-admitted comfort zone, but it did him some good; this already-stellar artist reaches a new artistic peak with Music Is Emotion.”
– Dan Bilawsky, All About Jazz
“[Keberle] is clearly in the vanguard of a handful of stalwarts
re-introducing the trombone to now unaccustomed ears”
– Bob Gish, Jazz Inside
“sprawling, multi-themed approach to composition…
Double Quartet indicates Keberle’s flowering skills as a composer and arranger”
– All About Jazz
The Recôncavo is an almost invisible center-of-gravity. Circumscribing the Bay of All Saints, this region was landing for more enslaved human beings than any other such throughout all of human history. Not unrelated, it is also birthplace of some of the most physically & spiritually uplifting music ever made. —Sparrow
"Dear Sparrow: I am thrilled to receive your email! Thank you for including me in this wonderful matrix."
—Susan Rogers: Personal recording engineer for Prince, inc. "Purple Rain", "Sign o' the Times", "Around the World in a Day"... Director of the Berklee Music Perception and Cognition Laboratory
I'm Pardal here in Brazil (that's "Sparrow" in English). The deep roots of this project are in Manhattan, where Allen Klein (managed the Beatles and The Rolling Stones) called me about royalties for the estate of Sam Cooke... where Jerry Ragovoy (co-wrote Time is On My Side, sung by the Stones; Piece of My Heart, Janis Joplin of course; and Pata Pata, sung by the great Miriam Makeba) called me looking for unpaid royalties... where I did contract and licensing for Carlinhos Brown's participation on Bahia Black with Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock...
...where I rescued unpaid royalties for Aretha Franklin (from Atlantic Records), Barbra Streisand (from CBS Records), Led Zeppelin, Mongo Santamaria, Gilberto Gil, Astrud Gilberto, Airto Moreira, Jim Hall, Wah Wah Watson (Melvin Ragin), Ray Barretto, Philip Glass, Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd for his interest in Bob Marley compositions, Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam and others...
...where I worked with Earl "Speedo" Carroll of the Cadillacs (who went from doo-wopping as a kid on Harlem streetcorners to top of the charts to working as a janitor at P.S. 87 in Manhattan without ever losing what it was that made him special in the first place), and with Jake and Zeke Carey of The Flamingos (I Only Have Eyes for You)... stuff like that.
Yeah this is Bob's first record contract, made with Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd of Studio One and co-signed by his aunt because he was under 21. I took it to Black Rock to argue with CBS' lawyers about the royalties they didn't want to pay. They paid.
MATRIX MUSICAL
The Matrix was built below among some of the world's most powerfully moving music, some of it made by people barely known beyond village borders. Or in the case of Sodré, his anthem A MASSA — a paean to Brazil's poor ("our pain is the pain of a timid boy, a calf stepped on...") — having blasted from every radio between the Amazon and Brazil's industrial south, before he was silenced. (that's me left, with David Dye & Kim Junod for U.S. National Public Radio) ... The Matrix started with Sodré, with João do Boi, with Roberto Mendes, with Bule Bule, with Roque Ferreira... music rooted in the sugarcane plantations of Bahia. Hence our logo (a cane cutter).