Jazz Articles about Geoffrey Keezer

About Geoffrey Keezer

Album Review

Michael Dease: City Life: Music of Gregg Hill

Read "City Life: Music of Gregg Hill" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan

by Dan McClenaghan
June 21, 2025

Jazz trios featuring a horn, bass and drums get right to the core of musical expression. With, most commonly, a saxophone--see Sonny Rollins' blueprint for the horn and trio setting, the 1957 Contemporary Records album Way Out West--the music flows freely. The players do not need to chase chords around. The result is a stretching of the melodies with freewheeling rhythmic finesse. Trombone, bass and drums outings are rare, but Michael Dease goes for it on CD 1 ...

Album Review

Geoffrey Keezer: Live at Birdland

Read "Live at Birdland" reviewed by Pierre Giroux

by Pierre Giroux
September 16, 2024

Pianist Geoffrey Keezer's 2024 release, Live At Birdland, is his first live trio recording in more than 15 years. Accompanied by those rhythmic stalwarts, bassist John Patitucci and drummer Clarence Penn, the group gives a tutorial in the art of the jazz trio filled with unparalleled intimacy and dynamism. In constructing the track list, Keezer wanted to acknowledge the contribution of his heroes, Wayne Shorter and Chick Corea, to his music and his career. Accordingly, three compositions from each are ...

Album Review

Yvonnick Prené & Geoffrey Keezer: Jobim's World

Read "Jobim's World" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
May 9, 2024

If there's such a thing as casual sophistication, Yvonnick Prené has it in spades. That aspect of this chromatic harmonica pro's playing has shown itself to varying degrees across his discography and it's highly pronounced in these gorgeous and intimate duo performances with pianist Geoffrey Keezer. After releasing Listen! (Sunnyside, 2023) to great acclaim, this leader was looking to move away from that album's modernistic quintet format. So, in brainstorming with producer Daniel Yvinec, the idea of ...

Album Review

David Whitman: Ode To Joe

Read "Ode To Joe" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
October 10, 2023

While West Coast drummer David Whitman's Ode to Joe [Henderson] is a rather brief one at less than thirty-three minutes, it is otherwise admirable for what is enclosed within its concise parameters. Whitman leads a well-schooled septet whose makeup is freshened by rotating tenor saxophonists Bob Sheppard and Rob Lockart and guitarists Bruce Forman and Chris Montgomery. Whitman and trumpeter Andrew Neesley share composer credits, and Neesley handles the arrangements, awakening warm memories of the Golden Age ...

Album Review

David Whitman: Ode To Joe

Read "Ode To Joe" reviewed by Richard J Salvucci

by Richard J Salvucci
September 17, 2023

Dipping into this fine recording is, to mix metaphors a bit, like opening a time capsule. That capsule is called One For All (A&M, 1990), perhaps the final studio recording of Art Blakey with The Jazz Messengers. It was not a perfect outing, but it was a memorable one. The lines got into the head and stayed there, just waiting for a chance to be reawakened. Well, now is the time with Ode to Joe. A convenient link between the ...

Album Review

Michael Dease: The Other Shoe: The Music of Gregg Hill

Read "The Other Shoe: The Music of Gregg Hill" reviewed by Jerome Wilson

by Jerome Wilson
April 14, 2023

Gregg Hill is a jazz composer favored by several jazz musicians who have recorded entire albums of his work, such as guitarist Randy Napoleon and bassist Rodney Whitaker. Here trombonist Michael Dease joins the party with a full album of Hill pieces arranged for a quintet. Hill's writing on this album delves into a wide array of conventional forms such as blues, ballads, and Latin jazz, but always with unique twists and ideas present. Some of his compositions ...

Liner Notes

Michael Dease: The Other Shoe: The Music of Gregg Hill

by AAJ Staff
March 26, 2023

"Think of any big city," Greg Hill says, introducing the narrative armature of his composition, “The Other Shoe," the denouement and title track of this stimulating collaboration with Michael Dease, who arranged each of Hill's 10 compositions contained herein. “It's 2 in the morning, you're still awake, and your neighbor comes in upstairs. You hear the first clunk when his shoe hits the floor. Then you wait. He may be inebriated. It may take a while to get the other ...