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| (© John Abbott) |
Under the banner of The Art of Arranging, Keezer will guide the orchestra through his unique, new treatments of jazz classics by saxophonists Charlie Parker, John Coltrane and Wayne Shorter as well as specially re-imagined arrangements of Keezer’s own award-winning compositions.
SNJO founder and artistic director, saxophonist Tommy Smith is excited to be working again with Wisconsin-born Keezer, who has contributed to over a dozen of the orchestra’s projects and recordings over the past twenty years.
“Geoffrey is one of the world’s most gifted, most sought-after musicians and composers,” says Smith. “He has worked with true jazz legends including drummer and renowned talent scout Art Blakey, who led one of jazz’s most revered bands, the Jazz Messengers, from the 1950s through to the 1980s. His talent has also been recognised in the pop arena through touring with Sting, who described him as a superb technician and improviser, a musician’s musician.”
A former child prodigy, Keezer began playing professionally in his teens and was just eighteen when he joined Blakey’s Jazz Messengers. He went on to work with Ray Brown (the bassist for Ella Fitzgerald and Oscar Peterson), trumpeter Art Farmer, singer-pianist Diana Krall, and saxophonists Benny Golson, Wayne Shorter, Joshua Redman and David Sanborn. His own recordings, including his Grammy-winning album, Refuge, have embraced mainstream jazz, funk, blues and gospel music.
“Geoffrey’s appreciation and understanding of music are huge,” says Tommy Smith. “He has delivered superbly sensitive arrangements for us of pieces by composers and songwriters from Henry Mancini and Leonard Bernstein to Robert Burns and although I thought his strength lay in ballads, his reimagining of bass guitar revolutionary Jaco Pastorious’ animated Teen Town was strikingly effervescent. We’re looking forward immensely to welcoming him back to Scotland.”
Geoffrey Keezer appears with the Scottish National Jazz Orchestra at Glasgow Royal Concert Hall on Friday Sept. 29; Queen’s Cross Church, Aberdeen on Saturday Sept. 30 and Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh on Sunday Oct. 1.
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