Four years after Buena Vista Social Club, and 55 years after Dizzy Gillespie brought Chano Pozo to Carnegie Hall, the Cuban-music scene still appears to be an inexhaustible font of surprises. Last week it was the septet Eclipse, who made their US debut in a series of Boston-area one-nighters — first at Scullers on Wednesday, January 15, then at Woodman’s Essex Room in Ipswich on Friday, and finally at the Western Front in Cambridge on Saturday before moving on to gigs in Chicago and New York. Eclipse are fronted by trumpeter/composer Basilio Márquez, former lead trumpeter for the venerable Cuban ensemble Irakere. They came to the states with the artistic endorsement of former Irakere leader (and current international piano star) Chucho Valdés.

The number of eminent Boston music scenesters seen at Scullers on Thursday night included former Boston Globe (and Phoenix) critic Bob Blumenthal (now a part of the team working with Branford Marsalis on the Marsalis Music label) and colleagues from the associated Wilkins Management, as well as FNX radio network " Jazz Brunch " host and Afro-Latin-music aficionado Jeff Turton. At the Western Front on Saturday night, State Senator Jarrett Barrios got in on the dancing and made a short speech — in Spanish — from the stage. (Barrios is a Florida-born Cuban-American.) Meanwhile, Western Front proprietor Marvin Gilmore got on stage to shake maracas with the group, and Boston-based piano-jazz hero Danilo Pérez sat in with the band for a few numbers.

And what about the music? The septet includes a typically hefty if supple Cuban rhythm section of timbales, congas, and trap drums, plus electric bass, Márquez’s trumpet, and his cousin Moises on saxophone, plus Raphael Gavilán doubling on trumpet and timbales. Márquez, dressed in all-white flowing shirt and trousers, played a trumpet with an uptilted bell à la Dizzy, with all the requisite high notes and lightning runs. But what was most impressive was the range and complexity of the arrangements. The band assayed old-style son montuno call-and-response vocal chants, Cuban big-band flag-waver " El Manisero, " Charlie Parker’s " Donna Lee, " and contemporary funk rhythms, an equal mix of sophisticated jazz and high-energy dance music. Rather than merely jamming on a theme, the band negotiated Márquez’s narrative shifts in meter, harmony, and dynamics, with the three horns occasionally playing lickety-split unison lines. When a call-and-response figure erupted into a three-way collective improv of jamming horns, the band members were at their high-spirited best. " This is like family, " said a pleased Pérez after the second set. " They bring a true joy to the music, which is so necessary right now. "