The one thing you can be assured when you listen to music – new or re-interpreted – by Doug Beavers, is that it’s going to be superbly conceived. Arrangements are going to be well-thought out, almost always luminous and musically aerodynamic. In other words, it is sure to be music that is first rate, befitting the celebrated Grammy Award winning status] of Mr Beavers.
But listening to the music of this clearly ambitious album, Luna, one is almost forced to consider Mr Beavers as more than just a virtuoso trombonist and celebrated bandleader. For here [in the repertoire of Luna is evidence that he is already a great composer, arranger, and bandleader.
That is a lot of hyperbole, but the music on this album supports this thesis in so many ways. The most compelling evidence in support of that is the manner in which he pays tribute to tradition; not the kind of usual musical lip-service with slick melodic, harmonic and rhythmic hooks and gestures, but by breaking out of the prison of tradition, throwing out melodic, harmonic and rhythmic hooks what has become tired from overuse, and building from what is left over.
The music of Luna has evidence of all of that – not only in the 6-movement-long Luna Suite, but also in the five other miniatures that follow.
The disc also features the gifted bassist Luques Curtis, pianist Gabriel Chakarji together with celebrated names like saxophonist Iván Renta, guitarist Paul Bollenbeck and drummers and percussionists Camilo Molina and Luisito Quintero among many others.
And it ends with the exhilarating addendum, Sands of Time, a fitting, eschatological meditation with which to end Luna, an album [which taken together with its predecessor, Sol] which music aptly meditates, frets, ripples and tumbles with existentialism befitting a composer who plumbs the depth of his being to express himself whole-heartedly while also honouring the continuum of music.