You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - Why We Love Geoffrey Keezer

Episode Date: June 1, 2022

Time to show some love to one of our favorite pianists in the world. Tune in hear Adam and Peter show Geoff Keezer some OSN love. Check out Geoff Keezer Here, Here, and also Here!Have a question for us? Leave us a SpeakPipeCheckout courses from Adam, Peter and more at Open StudioLet us know what you think by leaving a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review, or head over to our YouTube channel.Follow us on Twitter | Instagram

Hey, Peter. Hey, what's up, Adam? Kind of a special show today. Kind of a special show. A very special show, my friend. The show is all about one guy. Adam Maness. Nope, nope.

Better than that. Peter Martin? Better than that. Herbie Hancock. Not quite as good as that. Okay. Stay tuned. I'm Adam Manus.

And I'm Peter Martin. And you're listening to the You'll Hear Podcast. Jazz. Splained. Oh, he switched it up. He made it a little bit less formal. A little more economical. Yeah.

No, I like it. I've been really into, with your urging, I go now through, I can't send an email unless I've gone through and taken out at least two words. That's right. You know what I mean? That's right. Yeah. Why do we do that?

Well, I mean, it's the same thing with solo. You preach that on soloing sometimes, you know? That's true. But also just play what's necessary. Don't just sit there, you know. Just sit there rambling on. We're here. We're not explaining jazz.

We're jazz-splaining. We're man jazz. No, no, we're not doing that. That we're not allowed to do. But jazz-splaining we can do. Well, can we explain about one man today? Yes. One of our faves.

Well, before we even say that, I just want to, we've heard this intro so many times. The phrase ad infinitum comes to mind from the Latin to do over, to overplay a song. What fancy school did you go to for ad infinitum? I took Latin in seventh grade. Did I ever tell you that? Did you really? I did. You went to a school that taught Latin in seven grade?

Mrs. Cluzora was my Latin teacher. I had a little crush on her. I'm not going to lie. That's why I had a love for Latin. Folks, that's how we remembered that word. That's right. Totally. But no, as we were just hearing that, just a big shout out to another special gentleman,

friend of the pod, friend of open studio, Mr. Greg Hutchinson. Oh, yeah. Who's playing drums on that and the tambourine at the same time. He kind of makes it. He makes it, but you know what? It's a great tune, Peter, but I mean, Hutch. I just threw it at him. Like, we'd never played it before we recorded that time.

And like, I played him the first part. I gave him the chart. And he was like, all right, cool, let's do this. And we were in separate rooms. at Shock City. Yeah. And he just, all of a sudden, I heard this tambourine. I'm like, I don't see tambourine on the, but he just, he just has that uncanny ability

not only to kill it. Yeah. But to add that one little element that just pushes it over the edge. I was just about to say that the feel of this tune of our theme, emotion and motion here. You know, the seven. The way he comes in. Oh, come on. The way he comes in.

Oh, come on. No, not me. Him. No, I know. I just accidentally pressed it. But you hear that. But you hear that. I don't even know how you did.

Like, you got it on the time. or something. Yeah, I was going to say, you know, it's right in Hutch's wheelhouse, but how many wheelhouses this guy have? Exactly. He's got a ton of wheelhouses. But you know what? Lesson one before we even get to our ultra special calling guest is to hire the best musicians

that you can afford. And you know what? If not take out a loan, because it's going to pay you, it's going to pay you back. It makes each difference. Get those, get the best. I mean, that's like, that's the secret to success in music. We're going to bring to the table whatever we're going to bring. And of course, you know, we talk about practicing and learning all these.

things and that's what this is all about. But I think that you and I both share that sort of intuitive feel, because you're always surrounding yourself with great musicians as well. And, you know, it costs something sometimes. But I am lazy, Peter. And like, you know, you hire Gregory Hutchinson to play your record. You didn't have to come up with any of that, what he just did. That's right. You know what I mean? You hire the right person. They came in. They gave you something. You didn't even know you wanted. I wanted tambourine. You didn't even know you want a tambourine. No, and then you can claim credit for. I can be like, you know, I remember when I, when I I, I see, I shouldn't have told the story. I could have been like, I remember when I put

tambourine, add infinitum on the chart. Add infinitum on the floor, Tom. Uh, well, Hodge, if you're listening, let us know exactly how you did that. Actually, we get, I don't even remember playing on our record. Exactly. He does so much. So, okay, but we're not here to talk about Craverick Hutchinson exclusively today. We're here about someone else. We got a speak pipe from someone. You know, we woke up. We checked our speak pipes. First of all, I stay woke. I don't but you. I don't. I wake up and I wake up.

You know what I mean? Yes. But we opened up SpeakPipe in, you know, several hours before we started recording today. Well, you open. I actually don't have the login anymore, so it's very hard for me to open it. I have to wait until I get in here and hear it from you. But usually we get, you know, we get like from some of our regulars. Shout out to Alex.

Shout out to Zoom in Vancouver. Yes. Space man. Space man. That's Alex. Birch and we've had a ton of great regulars over the over the few last few months. But then you get a speakpipe and you see there's one from Jeffrey Keiser

and interest peeks up a little bit. That's right. He jumps to the front of the line. And then you see you have two from Jeffrey Keiser and you see the first one is at its maximum time, which is one minute, 30 seconds. And you think, oh, Jeffrey Keiser wanted to talk for a while. So should we start on that one?

Let's start on that one. Well, it could be like a correction on the second one. We'll see. Let's find out. Cats. It's Jeffrey Kieser. I'm sitting over here in Denmark looking at the ocean listening to your podcasts. And I had to leave you a speak pipe because I first, I kept reading it as sneak pipe. S-N-E-A-K. And I thought, good Lord, what is that? And I finally saw that it said speak pipe. So anyway, I'll pipe down and get. get off your pipe, I guess, pipeline. Just enjoying listening to your slash chords and the Al Gore rhythms

and all that. Actually, got an Al Gore story I can tell you. I played a Christmas party for him one year in San Diego. His girlfriend lives in San Diego, Liz Keitel. So she hired me as a surprise, like a sneak pipe, sneaky piano gift for Al. So, the the the catering guy sneaks me in the back door and I'm at the piano and then they come in and um I played like a set of Christmas tunes on his piano for for him some guests but anyway the funny thing is that I pulled up to this giant ranch in in like you know San Diego County and she's got horses and all this stuff and I look at all the cars of all the guests there there is not No, and that's when the video cuts off.

What a great, what a great, a dramatic place to, to segue from part one to part two. There was not Steinway, is he going to say? And, you know, the unfortunate thing for Jeffrey is that that was, that is going to be the punchline, as we'll find out here in the next speak pipe. So, lesson learned here, folks, you get 90 seconds. We're still on the, on the free plan, I believe. I think we have many to upgrade. We got a world-class pianist. calling in and it gets cut off right at his punchline. But did that deter our buddy Jeffrey

Keiser? It did not. No. Persisted, just like his soloing. Here it is. Sorry, part two. This will be short. Anyway, I drive up to Al Gore's Ranch and there's not one electric car or hybrid car anywhere. All the guests are driving Mercedes, BMWs, you know, Lincoln's. I'm like, where are the, where are the Priuses? up in this mofo. Anyway, enjoy your sneak pipe. Oh, that's why I read a sneak pipe, because I'm listening to Sneak P-Cosode

and speaking on speak pipe. Okay, this makes sense. So my brain put it together is sneak pipe. Sneak pike. Okay, guys, bye. All right, so we decided to call this episode why we love Jeffrey Kieser. Right, because he didn't actually ask a question.

Yeah, he left us some couple of speak pipes. And never, never asked a question, which is totally fine, very interesting anecdote there about pulling up to Al Gore. Because, you know, Caleb named our algorithm episode. I don't know if you saw this, Peter. I know you follow the... Well, hold on.

I know you think I'm not paying attention. I'm actually texting with Jeff, right? Oh, you're getting the text. Okay, this is going to be very... I'm going to be reading Jeff's text now. I'm going to say, any messages for the listeners question? He says, oh, no, not sure if those are for public... They absolutely is for public assumption.

Oh, it was very entertaining, Jeffrey. Yeah. Yeah. No, that is interesting, though. You would think that in, you know, the guy who's famous for environmental conversation, that it would be just full of Tesla's and Priuses or whatever. That's right, right. This is the complicated world we live in, Peter.

So Jeffrey Kieser, we have the most up-to-date message ever. Hi from Paris from Kieser. Oh, actually, you know what? I know because I saw his Instagram earlier today. Jeffrey is playing with David Sandborn with a great band that we just. heard recently. Yeah, it was amazing. I think it's the same band. Ben Williams on bass. Incredible. Billy Killson on drums. Jeffrey Kieser. Oh, no. Yeah, that's who's on the tour. It was actually James Gina's here. Equally great. Yeah. And Keyzer on. Last time they were through,

well, that's Ben Williams, though. Right, right. And David Sandborn, who's just rejuvenated. I mean, he's not even rejuvenated. He's always been juvenated. He loves that band. You could, you could tell it. I mean, he told me when I saw on the break. I mean, I love that Dave the Sanborn loves that band because then we get to hear that band. Yeah, exactly. So, so awesome to hear. Jeffrey, in that context. Like I saw a picture he posted of him playing some synthesizers. I just like hearing

him on the synthesizers. You know what I mean? He segues between the piano and the sense like at just the right time, better than anybody out here doing it now. So we just wanted to give you a shout out, Jeffrey. Thanks for all you do for Open Studio. For those of you don't know.

I was just going to say too, sorry to interrupt, but the high from Paris, I was just going to say he's playing at Las Sine Musicale this evening. I was actually at that same hall about two months ago and it is beautiful. I'm going to text him that in a second. but it's a really cool place in the middle of the Sen or Seen Sen. Am I saying that correctly?

La Sen, the river. Yeah. The Sen, seen, sen. Man, I'm the last person to ask about French. The big river. There's like a kind of island almost like built. Not built. It's just a bridge that goes over.

But they built this performing arts complex. It's almost in the suburbs on the west side of Paris. But it's beautiful. Wait, something in Paris is beautiful? I know. It's real modern, though. It's, yeah. Anyway, so as you were saying,

I don't know if folks know is what you said. Oh, yeah, yeah. I don't know if folks know that Jeffrey has made three really incredible courses, soon to be four really incredible courses for Open Studio. He's made some of our, I think, most well-received YouTube videos. He is one of our most popular artists, and we're just so grateful for everything that Jeffrey shared with us. Yeah.

I know, Peter, I'm a better player for stuff that he's shared with Open Studio. You know, I've, the way that he wraps his mind around very complicated concepts in a very simple way is pretty awesome. So with that said, we just like to show keys a little bit love here. So we've got a couple of tunes pulled up from the old YouTubes that will do the first one from you. And maybe not listen to the whole tune because each one of these is pretty long. Right. But this one I kind of chose, I got a lot of like favorite keezers. And it's funny because I always tell them like different tracks I like.

And he's like, oh, that was from a long time. He's like, he's a perfectionist in terms of like kind of always doubting these things. Weird because he's always sounded incredible. Exactly. Well, that's the way it usually goes. But this track, I come back to a lot and I've actually studied the tune because I think the composition is so beautiful. It's called Hanu. Yeah.

And he wrote it a while ago. I actually have this. He has some really good sheet music on this that I believe is still available for purges on his website. We'll link below to that. But he's very, like I love this performance of it. I love the band. This is featuring Joe Locke on vibraphone. It's Mike Pope on bass and Terry on Gully.

Taryong Gully. A younger, all of them younger. Does it say what year this is from? 2007. 2007. Okay, I was going to think even earlier. Okay. And it's from the, does it say where the,

because I played there before, there's actually a video on YouTube with Diane Reeves and Roy Hargrove that I was on. It's from that same festival. The gross concert show jazz. This is really, it's in Germany. It's embarrassing.

It's in Germany. Salzow Germany. Salto Germany. Yeah. So anyway, it's a great venue. They have great video. They have great audio. And we'll link to the YouTube as well below.

Let's check it out. This is Hanu with Joe Locke and the Jeffrey Keeser group. Okay, we got to just pause for just a second there. Okay. Can we just appreciate the voicing, like the way he plays those octaves and then the way he plays those chords, it's like it's too different. Yeah. You know, it's like a space time continuum that he's just transporting himself at the same time. in the way that they're offset, the beauty there,

but two different ways of playing the instrument. It's just stunning to me. I've noticed that a lot of his teaching that I have a fortune of helping to produce and work on subsequently. A lot of his teaching is focused around different textures of doing anything. So if he's talking about note choices

or voicings or something like that, he's discussing the texture of it and why it's important, right? So he won't just do something left in space like those bell-like tones that he does at the top there while he's doing those chords at the bottom. I mean, that's purposeful there. I think we might even have a different same version of this, but without the buzz. This is some slightly older footage, but not so much.

There we go. Yeah, the dynamics is special. Great tune as well. Those little, for lack of a better word, polychord ideas under the melody. I feel like is a Kieser signature, you know, that's a Jeffrey Kieser, copyrighted. I mean, you can't. Not actually, it should be. Copyright, open studio.

Let's just say a lot of cats owe him some money. That's right. I think this is all, I think I remember talking about this. This is all just open, like, improv before the tune even starts. Huh. But that's, learn how to play an octave like that, you can go far. What about this intro to is how much it. It serves the tune, you know, when the tune comes in.

It's not flash for flash sake, or it's my feature. So I got to, you know what I mean? It is playing the music. So I'm actually looking at the chart. Now this is all just... It's all just the setup. Now it's solo piano intro. Now a piano sets tempo.

Tarion looks like he's ready to... 6.4. 5. 6. Oh, yeah, I can see Joe Locke actually counting with you here. Yeah. Oh, is he? Yeah, he's going... So this is funny, because I can see the sheet music, but I can't see the video.

You can see the video, but we can both hear. So he has this written as A flat over C. This melody, though. It's a little shifting between... Are those voicing something that would interest you? This is all one chord. Now, there's some kizzerisms right there. So this is like repeating back to the A-section, but with a different groove now.

Here's a controversial statement. Joe Locke is good at the vibraphone. Oh, my God. I think it's locked in on this melody. Just playing the melody in the way that he is. Why can't I just play the melody? Very inspiring, man. What a sound.

I meant that facetiously, by the way. There's nothing controversial about that. I caught you. I can see your facial expression. We get email. Yeah. Oh. Man, the counter melody that bass line sets up with the rhythmic intensity.

Oh. Now we're going to, I think, the bridge. It's all they're cool. Oh, no. He's got that B flat over D but it's got that major seven in it Oh But all those possibilities he has for voices

So good man One thing I love about Jeffrey's Compositions and his arrangements Yeah Both like whenever he's in charge of shaping The tune It is It is both like

I mean it's what every great composer arrangement Ranger does, right? Like, it feels simultaneously familiar, but full of surprises. You never feel super settled, but you never feel like you're let out to dry. There's like, you're hung out to dry. Like, you never feel like left out on your own and I don't know if I'm in good hands. You always feel taken care of as the audience member, but still delighted with surprise. Never gets boring. In fact, just the opposite. You're always like, oh my gosh, what's going to happen next? But it never feels unsettled. With keys, you don't need the, what's the little thing called that, help, I've fallen and I can't get up.

Life alert. Life alert. You don't need a life alert. He's got you. Sometimes you need a life alert when you're hearing some modern stuff. Yeah, exactly. Ooh, I like that. A little shady, shamed.

No, no, no, no. You know how it is. Yeah. All right, well, this is a great pick. So let's do one more here. This is my pick. And we'll go out on this, Peter. this is actually from an open studio video.

I was interested which one you were going to choose. It's called Jeffrey Kieser Epic Piano Solo, which we might tweak that title. Oh, is this the solo piano? Solo piano. This is the nearness of you. He just recorded this offhand for a course he did on called The Elements of Solo Piano,

which would have linked to that course too, because it's brilliant. Yeah, and I mean, the thing with this too is, isn't this, didn't Max totally transcribe every part of this? Yeah, Max Chimis are. It's on my list to learn this. Not because I don't want to. I'm scared of him. But check out.

So this is a, he's in 3-4, and he puts a groove on the nearness of you that is so incredible. Yeah. And I don't know how he does it. Like, I don't know how he thinks about it. But, well, I guess I should check out the course because the key breaks down the whole thing. Yeah. No, but like the inspiration for this is really mind-blowing to me. So we'll go out on this.

Thank you, Jeffrey, for leaving the speech by the band. Come on and talk. We're going to have you on and talk about all this stuff. He's got to come into the new studio. do some stuff. You've got to come check out the new space. Wait, let me just check if he texted back anything. You said, enjoy that venue in Paris,

and he texted back. Looking forward, I hope you left me some notes in that piano. Yeah, yeah, right. I think you're all good with that. Yeah. All right, well, thank you, Peter. Thank you, Jeffrey.

Yep, thanks, Adam. Thanks, Keyes. For the next time you'll hear it.