Just how visionary was Maurice Ravel in his pronouncements on the future of music? During a US tour in 1928 he paused to reproach his hosts: “You Americans take jazz too lightly. You seem to see it as a music of little value, vulgar and ephemeral. In my point of view, it is jazz that will give rise to the national music of the United States.” Of course, that was four years after the premiere of Gershwin’s ‘Rhapsody in Blue’, by which time Paul Whiteman’s band had performed it over 80 times and more than a million copies had been sold on record. So Americans were already well on their way to adopting jazz as their ‘national music’. (Ravel actually spent time with Gershwin in Harlem watching lindy hoppers jump around to hot jazz.) Anyway, Ravel felt a deep sympathy for jazz, and jazz musicians have been returning the compliment ever since, finding interest and inspiration in his work. Which is where American trombonist Ryan Keberle and French pianist Frank Woeste come in with their Reverso – Suite Ravel, which pays homage to the French composer’s ‘Le tombeau de Couperin’ (1914–17). There are collectively improvised impromptus created with cellist Vincent Courtois and drummer Jeff Ballard, as well as cuts that offer a tip of the hat to the six movements of Ravel’s original suite for solo piano: prelude, fugue, forlane, rigaudon, minuet and toccata. It combines a fine classical sense of structure with real jazzy verve, and has been realised with the assistance of a French American Jazz Exchange grant – surely even Trump would think that a good deal?