Ryan Keberle's Collectiv Do Brasil to Release Sonhos Da Esquina, March 18

Of all the horns in a modern ensemble, the trombone might easily replace the vocalist. This probably has to do with the unique instrument's tone, color, range, and pitch which enables a trombonist to evoke the human voice, moaning and crying like the very best blues singers.

The trombone in Brazilian music is able to do something altogether different. It evokes that ephemeral Brazilian emotion called "saudades". When Ryan Keberle plays the trombone with his Brazilian colleagues in Collectiv do Brasil, he gives that emotion wings.

In 2017 Keberle took time off from his duties directing the jazz program at Hunter College to travel to Brazil. While in São Paulo he met three leading - and rather busy - Paulista musicians: pianist Felipe Silveira, bassist Tiago Alves and drummer and percussion colorist Paulinho Vicente. The trio and Keberle became instant soulmates, sharing a deep love for Brazil's sophisticated music tradition, represented by Ivan Lins, Edu Lobo, Toninho Horta and Milton Nascimento, and also a love for American jazz. It wasn't long before Keberle and the Brazilian trio became firmly entrenched as the quartet that was to become Collectiv do Brasil.

Soon new music by Keberle came into existence and was added to the repertoire that the quartet began to fine-tune and perfect at regular gigs in and around São Paulo. The extraordinary chemistry between the musicians was electrifying, transcending cultural topography, immersed in the universal beauty of the Afro-centric roots of Jazz and Brazilian music. It came as no surprise to anyone then that plans were drawn up for Keberle to return to Brazil; something he did a year later, to pay homage to the music they loved - specifically to some of its legendary creators Toninho Horta and Milton Nascimento. Thus the album Sonhos da Esquina was born.

In paying homage to Milton Nascimento and the music he made during his legendary years at Clube da Esquina, this music has, almost de rigueur, a prescient and almost spiritual quality to it, much like Nascimento's own music. But this quartet was also determined to honor another legendary songwriter, Toninho Horta together with three compositions by Keberle as well. This repertoire features Keberle's beautifully crafted arrangements, each of beguiling variety and sensuousness in every lovingly-crafted phrase of Sonhos da Esquina.

The chosen material, with the exception of the originals, judiciously focuses on some gems by both Nascimento and Horta. Listening to the manner in which Keberle sculpts the sustained inventions of [Silveira's arrangement] of "O Cio de Terra", its clear there's not a single 8th note that hasn't been fastidiously considered. On "Campinas" and "Carbon Neutral" Silveira's piano sashays, while Keberle seductively bends the notes in bittersweet, moaning harmonic conceptions.

The apogee of the album is Nascimento's iconic "Clube da Esquina 2" which is preceded by Keberle's original, crafted introduction "Sonhos da Esquina". Piano and bass herald the music before Keberle's questing trombone lines take over, each elegant melodic variation follows the other quite inexorably and with languid ease. Horta's "Aqui Oh!" is a swaggering chart burnished by the musicians' swing accented by the drummer's hissing cymbals. Nascimento's "Tarde" and Horta's "Francisca" are eloquently elegiac and aching yet spacious and mellifluous.

All of this sumptuous music has been brilliantly captured at Brazil's legendary Gargolandia Recording Studio on an album to absolutely die for.

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