You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - Geoffrey Keezer's 7 Favorite Solo Piano Tracks

Episode Date: April 11, 2020

Special guest Geoffrey Keezer joins Adam and Peter today as he counts down his all-time favorite solo piano performances. You can hear each of these tunes in their entirety with our Spotify playlist.Geoffrey Keezer's 7 Favorite Solo Piano TracksFred Hersch, Julian Lage - "Song Without Words #4: Duet"Hank Jones - "Satin Doll"Phineas Newborn Jr. - "All the Things You Are"Buddy Montgomery - "Since I Fell For You"Bud Powell - "Parisian Thoroughfare"Chucho Valdés - "Rumba Quajira"Mary Lou Williams - "Night Life"In light of the worldwide coronavirus pandemic, we understand that money is tight for a lot of people right now. That's why we've decided that for the duration of this crisis, we'll be running a Choose What You Pay campaign at Open Studio. Choose whichever course you want and then let us know how much you're willing to pay - that's it. For more info, click this link. And for our newest course from Geoffrey Keezer, go here.Interested in more music advice? Go here to browse our catalog of jazz lessons and courses available for purchase. And be sure to check out our All Access Pass - every course from Open Studio on every instrument.Let us know what you think by leaving a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review, or head over to our YouTube channel.Follow us on Facebook | Twitter | Instagram See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Hey, Peter. Hey. Oh, hey, it's Jeffrey Kieser, actually. Where's Peter? Peter? I'm right here. Hello. There he is.

I'm Adam Anis. And I'm Peter Martin. And you're listening to the You'll Hear a podcast. Daily Music Advice coming at you. Coming at you with way too many piano players today. There's a lot going on. It's a piano athon. That's right.

We have special guest, Jeffrey Kieser, live. from New York State. Jeffrey, how you doing, man? Doing good, man. Hanging in there, you know. We're just quarantooning out up here, you know? Yeah, I like that corn tuning out. Practicing some quarantine quarrentole voicings.

Oh, here we go. Somebody prepared today. I didn't. I promised this is just off the cuff. It was very good. Because me and Adam neither prepare nor do very good off the cuff. I don't either. I don't know. It's that time of day. Jeffrey, we want to have you on today because since this all started to go down here at Open Studio, we switched to a Choose What You Pay model.

And all of your courses that you've done for us really have started to pop off with that model, and especially your latest one elements of solo piano. So we thought it'd be cool to talk to you about some of your favorite solo piano tracks, not all of them, but seven of Jeffrey Keeser's favorite solo piano tracks. Yeah, absolutely. And I just want to thank everybody out there for supporting Open Studio, you know, and, you know, I think this current model, pay what you can is a really great way to go. I mean, this is, you know, everybody has a way in this way. And we, you know, absolutely, we want you to stay, keep shedding and keep swinging and, you know, and don't let this get you down. Don't let anything stop you. You know, and there's so many great courses. I mean, I mean, thank you for, you know, for people who bought mine. but I mean, you know, Adams courses, Peters, alios, and, and of course, anything else that you're into.

I mean, you know, all such so many great guitar courses and Diane Reeves and saxophone and trumpet and drums. I mean, this is a great, great platform. I'm really super honored to be part of it with you guys. So, you know, well, everybody's just loving and showing a lot of love to your courses. And especially, like I said, that solo piano chorus has really been popping off. People have really been enjoying it. And so, I mean, just to, you know, on the topic of solo piano, I mean, because we're all stuck at home, we're all going to, you know, become much better solo piano players by the time this thing is over. I mean, for me, the way that I really learned how to play solo piano was kind of under duress, and it was when I was playing with R. Blakey. And, you know, part of the show every night was that.

that art would break it down to, art would break it down to like a piano feature in the middle of the set. And, you know, the pianist would play like a little short medley of solo piano pieces usually no more than five or six minutes. And then art and the bassist would come out and we finished with a trio tune. And that was sort of the programmatic thing in the middle of the set to give the horn players a break. And, you know, it made for a good, you know, good sort of flow to the set. So as Art got older, and, you know, he started taking longer and longer breaks.

And sometimes the breaks would get, you know, go on 15, 20 minutes long. And then sometimes, and I would have to just, you know, I went from playing medleys to or segways to just kind of stopping tunes and starting another. And, you know, I'd play maybe two or three tunes and then look around and hope that they were coming out. Well, one night we were playing Catalinas and the old Catalina's in L.A. and Freddie Hubbard came down to hang and Freddie and Art went back in the dressing room and started, I think they forgot there was a gig going on, you know? They started partying or whatever.

And Art stayed back there for about 35 minutes. At least it felt like 35, 40 minutes. And I'm like an 18-year-old kid. I'm playing in front of this full audience, you know, and going, what do I do? So I just decided to play like virtually a solo piano set. And I keep looking around like, I played about six or seven tunes, you know. But it was really that sort of that experience.

I tell everybody that Art Blakey taught me how to play solo piano, you know, just by being forced to do it. So, you know, being that we're all kind of forced to stay home and shed, I think that, you know, we're going to really all become much better solo piano players when this is over, you know? Agreed. Yeah. So you put together a list here of seven of your favorites. Let's start with this first one. Let's just have a listen to Fred Hirsch from his song Without Words. Number four, this is duet. Is that right?

Yeah. Yeah. Here we go. Fred Hirsch. Songs without words, number four, duet. That's just absolutely gorgeous. Not too many folks who can do that. Yeah, I mean, what I really like about it, and if you listen to the whole track is when he gets into the solo, he's just improvising.

I mean, it really sounds like an overdove, but it's absolutely not. It's just him. I mean, the tune's called duet, and so essentially he's playing a duet with himself and the way that he's phrasing everything, You know, it really is that. And then when he gets into the solo,

it's like he's improvising a four-part fugue or something, you know. Man, it's incredible. You know, what a mind he has. And like a fully two-handed, ten-fingered, you know, piano player. Right. Really, really digging. So are... Have either of you guys caught his daily live Facebook

from his living room that he's been doing? No, I need to check that out. Yeah, me too. I just heard about it. I think he's doing it every... I want to say it's like 1 p.m. Eastern time. It's in the middle of the day and he's doing it, I think, every day. That's good because it'd be nice to have some content like in the kind of middle of the day because a lot of the concerts.

I've unfortunately had to miss your two from home concerts, Peter, because eight o'clock is like when I'm putting the baby to bed upstairs. Right. That's right. Yeah. I knew there was some reason I felt so much less nervous on these shows. See, I didn't even know a teaser wasn't able to watch. That's why I was so real. Relax. I was like, dang, okay, now I did it. Yeah. Come on, man. That's awesome. You know, that's something we got to figure out how to do is more of the, you know, live from home stuff. But when you got little, like young, young kids at home, it's, it's, that's a challenge because they want to, they want to run in and be part of it, you know.

Okay. So number two on your list here, this is something that you actually teach a little bit on your keys to piano chorus. This is Hank Jones' version of Satin' doll, and he does these really cool, almost block chord, almost drop two voicings, but they kind of vary, I think, throughout, right? Yeah, yeah. It's kind of like, I mean, I never had a chance to ask Hank personally how, what he was thinking about, but the way, what it looks like to me on the piano is there's, you know, so in the satin doll in the key of C, and the melody is normal melody from A to G. and then below that is a four-note voicing which is kind of divided between the two hands like two fingers in each hand and it's like a C-7-sharp 9 chord yeah yeah and then that voicing moves

as a unit up and down but and so sometimes it's contrary motion with the melody sometimes it's parallel but it's not exactly you know it's not da da da da da da da it's like da da da and so you get a little bit of a opening and closing between the top melody note and the top note of the top note of the that voicing. And then he puts the whole thing over the fifth, like over a G. You know, that's, I mean, that's oversimplifying it in a way. But that's kind of basically what he's doing. So it's really, really brilliant, you know? That's super hip. Let's hear it. Yeah. And I mean, it's so loose and, you know, and structured at the same time. It feels, it feels so natural the way he does that. It feels like part of the tune, which is what you know of any great arrangement, you know. Made it his own,

but still hear the tune in there. It's just so great. Well, you know, Hank, for me, he might be my favorite all-time solo piano player. And, you know, Hank's thing is because he, to me, encompasses the entire lineage and history of jazz piano. He's got all the stride stuff is there. And harmonically, you know, I mean, it doesn't hurt being, you know,

the brother of Thad Jones, you know. But all Hank's harmony is so, so hip. So he's like a stride pianist, but with like super modern harmony or something, you know? Yeah, and it's all like individual voice leading off the charts kind of stuff. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, there's another recording of his called Tiptoe Tap Dance, an album from 1976, 77.

And that record is like something I assigned my students to transcribe, you know. like it's me oh lord standing in the need of prayer that that is such an iconic arrangement he he recorded that later again with with charlie hayden on bass yeah but it's the exact same arrangement and it's all worked out like Hank played it the same way every time he played it but man i mean the harmony is just it's so dense and and thick and rich and i used to go see Hank play at Fat Tuesdays in New York, you know, in the 1990s, and I would sit right next to the piano right up close, which I always did. Anytime I went to see any piano player, I'd always try to sit right at the front table so I could watch their hands, you know? And I swear the

sounds that were coming out of that piano when Hank played that, I swear that he had two left hands and a right hand, you know, like he had an extra left hand. Because like, how do you get? He has that chunky sound somehow with everything. Down low and get all that stuff on top, you know? That's amazing. It's a mystery. All right, so moving on. So this is one that here on the podcast, we've come into conflict on how to pronounce Phineas newborn, Finis newborn? Yeah. Well, I guess the Memphis, you know, the locals, and he was from Memphis, they pronounced it finest. Yeah. But, you know, Phineas outside of, you know, outside of Memphis, I suppose.

Finius, Phineas sounds fancier, but Finis sounds more Memphis for sure. I suppose. We're close to Memphis here in St. Louis. So we'll call it, we'll say, Finus. We're that close. Yeah. This is his intro on, this is from a trio record, I think, isn't it? From all the things you are.

And this is insane. Yeah, this is his intro to all the things you are. It's a quartet, actually. It's trio, but then and his brother Calvin Newborn on guitar as well. Yeah. Cool. This is all the things you are, finest newborn junior. It's really the second chorus.

That's really mind-bottling. Cool. Well, then we'll just, it's our podcast. We can listen to it. Yeah, he works up to it. Patel, you've listened to this one once or twice, keys. Yeah. So, it's so orchestral.

There's such great orchestration going. Yeah. All the things you are. I mean, to me, I'm hearing, like, you know, cello sections, doing runs and harps, and even breaking it down to a guitar. Like, it sounds so orchestrated. It's just gorgeous. The colors that he's getting out of.

the piano is just crazy. Yeah. Yeah, definitely all those things are there. And I mean, obviously, for me, he was one of my very favorite pianists. And, you know, when he's playing trio, too, all that orchestration stuff is there. I mean, he plays the entire big band arrangement of Manteka. And you hear all the parts. Everything is it, the bass parts, trombones, you know, sax and trumpets, all the counterlines. Like, he puts the entire thing in, you know. It's so hip. next we're going to move on to Buddy Montgomery. This is from Live at Maybach Hall, Volume 15.

This is since I fell for you. Have a nice welcome from Mr. Buddy Montgomery. You just got to make the stank face as soon as you hear that. This one's hitting Peter Martin right in the gun, I could tell. Now I'm awake. Now I'm awake. Yeah. And I'm embarrassed to say I've never heard this live in

Mayback with Buddy, and that is incredible. So this is, I'll just say, too, we'll have a Spotify playlist for all of these that you can find here in the description, but this is one that's not on Spotify. I went out and bought it. I encourage you all listening to go buy this series, by the whole series. It's really beautiful solo piano stuff. Here's the little guy. Where did you go buy that?

Where'd you buy it? I got it on Amazon. What's up, Malcolm? What's up, Malcolm? What's up, Malcolm? This is what's great about this, you know, working from home. Yeah. But my story about Buddy Montgomery is so when I first moved to New York in 1989,

I used to go see Buddy play solo piano at the... He's totally in a shot. At the Parker Meridian Hotel in Midtown. And in Midtown. And Buddy, he played six nights a week there in the lounge. And the piano was like one of those. pianos with the lid off and it had a bar built around it so you could literally sit like at the piano you know and have a have a Shirley Temple or whatever and and and buddy really opened up my mind and

my ears to a lot of to to some solo piano ideas because he was the first cat that I saw that really really utilized the very bottom octave and the very top octave of the piano you know so whereas a lot of cats, when you play solo piano, we tend to play all kind of in the same middle range of the keyboard a lot. But Buddy would be walking a bass line on a blues, and he'd be using that low B-flat, you know, all the way down to the bottom and be solo in way, you know, like that. And he'd walk baselines down there in quite a bit lower range than most people do. And I thought, wow, that's great. I was like, you know, those octaves are fair game, just like, you know, like anything else.

You got all 88 notes, you know? And another thing about Buddy, I mean, obviously you could tell from that recording, he's so soulful and the blues is in everything he plays. And he always had really, really great time. And he's kind of like Harold Mayburn in that way. Like, you know, you hear with Mabe, too, like there's always like some quarter notes going. Like the time is like super, super clear. And so everything else that happens, the right hand could be more free

you know, almost almost like out of time kind of just soaring over the top of all that, but you always have that really strong sense of the groove in the left hand, you know? Yeah, it's so hip. So hip. Let's move on to the next one. This is one that a lot of you may know. This is Bud Powell from the Amazing Bud Powell, Parisian thoroughfare. Sorry, the genius. So good all the way around. This is one that you could easily, you know, could be one of your first solo piano transcriptions. Yeah. That head especially.

And you could learn a lot from how he plays that head. Well, hold on one of the first? Yeah, if you're Jeff Keiser. No, you know what I mean. Like boy genius of jazz piano in 1981. I'm just saying. Yeah. If you haven't transcribed that head yet.

Your mileage may vary. No, it's, well, the thing is I wanted to include it on this, on this podcast because I had a student asked me the other day about how to approach Bebob. as just a solo piano thing because, you know, we're always thinking of bebop as like something that happens with a rhythm section. And I was trying to think, are there examples of bebop era, you know, AK-1940s era solo piano that really has that language? And I thought, oh, yeah, you know, Bud, Genius of Bud Powell, there's all kinds of solo piano stuff on there. And how do you keep that intensity and that tempo and that energy going to be.

going when you're playing solo piano, you know. So because it's not, you know, where Bud, I mean, is traditionally thought of as someone who was kind of maybe the key guy to get away from the stride air and kind of, kind of free up that left hand from keeping time and it became more of a right-handed single-line thing. Kids and kids and pets are loud now in podcast, by the way. You know, you know, like, Bud. keeps that sort of intense hurricane force energy happening, you know, throughout that. And so what do you do? What is, what is one thing that Bud's doing?

He's kind of playing like a lot of roots and fifths. And it's kind of like, it has this kind of grit to it, you know, this kind of sound to it. And it's sort of similar to the way, like, Horace Silver comps kind of in the 50s and those early Horace Silver recordings where he's just kind of like, you know, you hear the left hand, but it's, the left hand is almost kind of like like a like a like a almost like an energy or sort of noise factor going on it's you know it's like this kind of thing you know and that's sort of what bud bud kind of does and it's it's interesting just to hear like what you know what how to approach that that music of that music of that time period as a solo piano thing you know and that that whole record is so brilliant yeah that's a must

for me for recommendation speaking of energy let's move to uh chucho valdez this is for from his live in New York record. This is Rumba Ki-Hira. Is that how you pronounce that? I'm not sure because I'm terrible pronouncing Spanish, but... Me too. Well, it's this.

Yeah. Chucho Valdez. Rumba live in New York. Trying to get my board together here. Man, talk about someone who seems like they could just play anything on the piano, that the instrument's no obstacle. When for most of us, it feels like some

kind of there to be wrestled with every day. He just feels like it's just whatever I want to play I can play. That's exactly it. I think Chucho is really my favorite living pianist right now. And man, to see him play solo piano, if you have any, once, you know, this thing is over and we're able to get out, I mean, that's always the caveat with anything we say right now. Like, once this is done, we can get out and go see concerts again. Man, any chance you get to see Chucho play live.

absolutely, you know, drop whatever you're doing and go to that gig. Because, man, and he can play everything. Like, you know, he's known as a quote-unquote Latin jazz pianists or Cuban, you know, jazz pianists. But, man, he can play bebop like the best of him. He can play show, you know, he plays Chopin. You know, in the course of one concert, he'll play pretty much everything that can be played on the piano. Man, I couldn't agree more. And I just was thinking, you know, it's like you appreciate.

those moments all the more now, like you say, because we can't get out there and hear him. But right now, but we will. And this idea of like, who's that? Oh, I thought somebody was in here. There's nobody here. You know, I saw him about three or four months ago, and he was, I had a flat tire right when I was coming to the club around the corner. And it was like halfway through the last set.

And I wanted to hear him so bad. I abandoned my car up on Grand, like a horrible spot and ran over it anyway. I got to see shoot you. It's like, I don't care. Bad decisions to go here. Yeah, yeah. You know, I don't care if my car gets towed, you know, what. Yeah, not missing.

Exactly. Yeah. Well, we're going to go out on one more, but before we do, thank you so much, Jeffrey, for being here. We're going to have you back frequently here while we're all hunkered in now that we're all set up for it. Unless you're busy going out somewhere. Because I want to know what, not just what you're listening to do, but what you're working on right now as your home. And then also, if anybody's interested, so you did put out this course for us, elements of solo piano, We're going to include a link here to the course.

We're doing a whole Choose What You Pay model right now. We don't want to be, we don't want money to be a barrier for you getting some productive work done on your instrument during this time. So check that link out. Also check out the link to the Spotify playlist. And also, and just to say, like, we did not, it's choose what you pay. We did not have as a plant, Jeffrey and Gillian's beautiful little boy, Malcolm, run out there for you to think about them having to feed and close this child as they're hungry. Don't even think about that is to make your choice when you want to buy a story. That's right.

That's right. Yeah, I did that on purpose. That's right. And Peter, you've got some great reverb going right now. You sound like the voice of God. I don't know what happened, man. I don't know what's going on. Are you muted, buddy?

I don't know what's happened. I'm going to mute myself. Y'all do your thing. So we're going to go out. This is Mary Lou Williams. This is a great choice. Mary Lou Williams, Nightlife. And until next time, you'll hear it.