Take 5 with Geoffrey Keezer

Have you ever wondered what your favorite musicians are listening to or what recordings influenced them? “Take Five” is a look at the music that inspires and excites them. It’s difficult to choose ONLY five recordings!

The Grammy-winner, a native of Eau Claire, Wisconsin is the son of musicians. He began playing piano and composing as a child. After briefly attending the Berklee College of Music, he moved to New York in 1989 and joined Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers. Keezer was the final pianist with the band.

His latest recording “Live at Birdland” (MARKEEZ) with John Patitucci and Clarence Penn is his first live trio record in more than 15 years. The recording features compositions by his heroes Wayne Shorter and Chick Corea. Keezer recorded with Corea and subbed in Shorter’s quartet in 2009. In 2009 he received a Grammy nomination for “Best Latin Jazz Album” for the album “Aurea.” Keezer’s 2022 recording “Playdate” (MarKeez Records) earned a 2023 GRAMMY® in the Best Instrumental Composition category for his song “Refuge.” He frequently performs with his wife jazz vocalist Gillian Margot.

Geoffrey also teaches” online courses with Open Studio, “The Keez to Jazz Piano,” “Advanced Jazz Piano Concepts” and “Elements of Solo Piano.”

“While it’s tremendously difficult to choose just five, these are albums that stitched themselves into my musical DNA in my formative years,” said Keezer. “They continue to inspire and excite me to the present day. Even decades later, I still hear new things when I listen to them!” —Geoffrey Keezer

Oscar Brown, Jr. – Sin & Soul (Columbia)
“My favorite album when I was about 4 or 5 years old. The album’s subject matter and sociocultural commentary were far beyond my ability to comprehend as a child but I just loved the sound of his voice and his lyrical delivery, particularly on Bobby Timmons’ “Dat Dere”. It tells the story of a father explaining the world to his young, inquisitive child. As a kid, I heard it from the child’s perspective. Now, as a father myself, I hear it the other way and it brings tears to my eyes.”

Chick Corea – The Leprechaun (Polydor)
“I was fascinated with analog synthesizers as a kid (still am), and this album was a playground of sound and textures, with complex and exciting compositions and of course great keyboard playing.  In 1976, for show and tell in kindergarten, I built a toy synthesizer out of some plywood, spools, thimbles, and rubber bands, drew sliders and patch cables with a magic marker, and wrote things on it like “oscillator” and “mixer” and “ring modulator.” I brought my contraption into school, put on the first track of the album called “Imp’s Welcome” and pretended to play along with it!”

Wayne Shorter – Atlantis (Columbia)
“I was already a die-hard Weather Report fan by the time Atlantis came out in 1985, but this album was something different entirely. It was like acoustic Weather Report mixed with classical chamber music! The music on Atlantis, along with Wayne’s subsequent releases Phantom Navigator, Joy Ryder and High Life blew my ears wide open and impacted my compositional style immensely.”

E. Power Biggs – Bach Organ Favorites, Volume 2 (Columbia Masterworks)
“What a perfect name for someone who plays the biggest, most powerful keyboard music ever written. As a kid, I loved the sound of the pipe organ, and when those bass pedals came roaring in, look out! I learned to memorize many pieces of music such as Bach’s preludes and Beethoven’s symphonies by internalizing their bass lines (root movement). Those two composers in particular really knew how to use the low notes to maximum dramatic effect.”

Phineas Newborn, Jr. – A World of Piano!  (Contemporary)
“This album had a profound impact on my piano playing when I was introduced to it as a teenager by pianist James Williams. Art Tatum and Oscar Peterson had already set the bar impossibly high, but there was something about Phineas’ playing that made that level of conceptual genius feel accessible and a somewhat realistic goal. One highlight for me is his recording of “Manteca”, where he plays literally all of the parts of Gil Fuller’s original big band arrangement simultaneously, somehow with only 2 hands and 10 fingers.”

geoffreykeezer.com
www.instagram.com/88keezer
www.openstudiojazz.com/courses/open-during-construction/

 Selected Discography

As a leader:
Waiting In The Wings (Sunnyside)
Curveball (Curveball)
Here and Now (Blue Note)
World Music (DIW)
Other Spheres (DIW)
For Phineas (Sackville)
Turn Up The Quiet (Sony)
Sublime: Honoring The Music of Hank Jones (with Kenny Barron, Chick Corea, Benny Green and Mulgrew Miller) (Telarc)
Free Association (with Jim Hall) (ArtistShare)
Aurea (ArtistShare)
On My Way to You (MarKeez)
Playdate (Markeez)
Live At Birdland (MarKeez)

As a sideman:
Art Blakey and The Jazz Messengers
Chippin In (Timeless)
One for All (A&M)

Ray Brown
Ray Brown Trio with Ulf Wakenius Summertime: (Telarc)
Christmas Songs with The Ray Brown Trio (Telarc) Some of My Best Friends Are…Piano Players (Telarc)
Some of My Best Friends Are … Trumpet Players (Telarc)
Live At Starbucks (Telarc)
Some of My Best Friends Are … Singers (Telarc)
Some of My Best Friends Are … Guitarists (Telarc)
Walk On: The Final Ray Brown Trio Recording, and Previously Unreleased Recordings (Telarc)

Art Farmer
Soul Eyes (Enja)
The Company I Keep (Arabesque)
The Meaning of Art (Arabesque)
Silk Road (Arabesque)

Benny Golson
Tenor Legacy (Arkadia Jazz)
One Day, Forever (Arkadia Jazz)

Christian McBride
Vertical Vision (Warner Brothers)

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