Doug Beavers – Luna (Circle 9 Records, 2023)
GRAMMY award-winning producer, composer, trombonist, and arranger Doug Beavers sixth album as a leader is Luna (moon in Spanish). Beavers is known widely as a leading trombonist of his time, as well as a member of the multi-GRAMMY award-winning ensemble Spanish Harlem Orchestra. His thrilling 2020 predecessor Sol (sun in Spanish) explored a dozen original compositions which mixed salsa with styles of Afro-Latin, R&B and soul. Meanwhile, Luna introduces a stirring and sabrosa (flavorful) expedition across a terrain of similar rhythmic styles, this time infused predominantly with tantalizing Latin Jazz.
In that regard, Luna is both a musical counterbalance to Sol and a conceptual one; Luna, the moon, is the celestial opposite to the sun. In 2021, Chamber Music America commissioned the “Luna Suite,” the first half of the record, through a New Jazz Works grant funded by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation. Beavers composed the suite while taking a residency in Sitges, Spain, along the Mediterranean Sea. At once sensitive, adventurous, soulful and meditative, Luna culminates the vast inner workings of a master composer and virtuoso instrumentalist of boundless sensibility and epic ambition.
‘Luna Suite’ musicians on tracks 1-6: Doug Beavers on trombone; Jeremy Bosch on flute & vocal; Ivan Renta on tenor and soprano saxophones; Manuel “Maneco” Ruiz on trumpet & flügelhorn; Max Seigel on bass trombone; Gabriel Chakarji on piano & Fender Rhodes; Jerry Madera on bass; Luisito Quintero on congas, timbales, and percussion; Camilo Molina on drums on bongos; with Carlos Cascante on lead vocal; Anthony Almonte on backing vocals.
Musicians on tracks 7-11: Doug Beavers on trombone; Conrad Herwig on trombone; Francisco Torres on trombone; Max Seigel on bass trombone & tuba ; Eric C. Davis on french horns; Dave Riekenburg on clarinets & bass clarinets; Joe Locke on vibraphone; Paul Bollenback on guitars; Gabriel Chakarji on piano & Fender Rhodes; Luques Curtis on acoustic bass; Robby Ameen on drums; Luisito Quintero on congas on timbales on percussion; George Delgado on itótele and shekere; Camilo Molina on okónkolo and iyá; Jeremy Bosch on vocals; Ada Dyer on vocals.
Buy Luna.
Author: Iliana Cabrera
