Ryan Keberle & Reverso

(Excerpted and lightly adapted from liner notes by Steve Smith—by kind permission)

The trans-oceanic chamber jazz trio Reverso—Frank West, piano; Ryan Keberle, trombone; and Vince Curt, cello—last graced the Playhouse stage just days before the world shut down in 2020. But during and after the pandemic, they've continued their Franco-American explorations of the jazz and classical crossroads first mapped by late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century figures like Ravel, "Les Six," and, most recently—the focus of a brand-new album (their sixth), Between Two Silences—Eric Satie.

Satie’s music has long fascinated jazz composers and improvisers, who’ve issued one-off covers and even entire albums of Satie reworkings. But rather than rendering Satie’s compositions in the manner of offbeat jazz standards, Reverso instead offers entirely new music inspired by elements of the composer’s life, character, and musical style. “I was attracted to Satie’s use of space, slow harmonic rhythm, sense of humor, and quirky…