Vocalist Gillian Margot and GRAMMY-winning Pianist Geoffrey Keezer Announce Captivating Self-Titled Duo Album, Releasing May 23, 2025

MarKeez Records proudly announces the release on May 23, 2025 of Gillian Margot and Geoffrey Keezer, a sublime voice-piano duo recital that is the fourth release on their eponymous imprint label. Recorded in December 2024 at Bunker Studio in Brooklyn, it marks a felicitous inflection point in the discographies of both musicians, each an erudite master of their instrument.

Partners in music since 2014 and in life since 2016, both Margot and Keezer share a predisposition to address, in Margot’s words, “different styles, genres, or grooves and feels, and harmonic implications,” an attitude that accounts for the capacious range of repertoire in their duo performances. “We’d be signing CDs and LPs at our merch table, and people inevitably asked, ‘So where is the duet album?’,” Margot says. “We finally took the hint. We decided to pull out a variety of songs we like, and whatever came to mind, we’d do it.”

A spirit of freedom judiciously balanced with collective consciousness pervades the proceedings, as Keezer and Margot mind-meld on a half-dozen ‘Standard’ standards – “Lush Life” and “The Peacocks” from the Jazz Songbook, and Great American Songbook chestnuts “Blame It on My Youth,” “Thou Swell,” “Day In, Day Out,” and “All My Tomorrows” – along with authoritatively interpreted songs by Hermeto Pascoal (“Joyce”) and Peter Gabriel (“Here Comes the Flood”), a virtuosic voice-as-instrument treatment of Chick Corea’s “Eternal Child,” and a possible future standard titled “The Greatest Story Ever Told”, by Donald Brown – Keezer’s early mentor – and his wife Dorothy Brown.

For both musicians, the repertoire of the various Songbooks and the performance standards of the most eminent practitioners of old-school jazz are imprinted on their DNA. Growing up in a Toronto suburb, Margot could recite the names of Sarah Vaughan, Billy Eckstine, Ella Fitzgerald, Nina Simone, Cleo Laine and Dinah Washington when she was still in preschool. “Mom played them so much around the house,” she recalls. “I could mimic really well – I sang ‘Lullaby of Birdland’ verbatim when I was about 6, the way my child knows Raffi.” Trained in classical piano, she transitioned to jazz after receiving a scholarship to York University, where she studied with bassist-pianist-vibraphonist Don Thompson, guitarist Lorne Lofsky, and pianist John Gittins, who Oscar Peterson “affectionately called his technique teacher.” Peterson frequently attended adjudication panels and gave occasional master classes.

“Oscar became a big advocate for me,” Margot says. “He encouraged me to keep singing and spoke of the importance of advocating for myself as a woman. Once I finished that schooling, I went out into the world and pounded pavement, getting gigs and forming my own band. I’d hear all the cats that were coming in from the U.S., whenever they were in town. I went to hear Ray Brown when Geoffrey was with him, though Geoffrey and I didn’t meet then. Kevin Mahogany took me under his wing, and Freddy Cole gave me some lessons; he told me to get my stuff together in Toronto and that New York would invite me when it was time, which effectively is what happened. I was eventually doing overseas residencies to make ends meet, and then Jeremy Pelt convinced me to come to New York and record. I’d already been there to do some music with Marcus and E.J. Strickland when Robert Glasper was in their band.”

Keezer’s serious engagement with the Songbooks dates to 1989, when he moved to New York and immediately made an impression, as denoted by his steady work during the 1990s with elite veterans Art Farmer and Benny Golson, as well as with Jimmy Heath, Jim Hall, and the five-member Contemporary Piano Ensemble with James Williams, Donald Brown, Mulgrew Miller and Harold Mabern.

“I related to those songs mostly as forms and sets of chord changes that I had to know, and didn’t initially learn the words,” Keezer says. “I subbed for Harold Mabern a few times with George Coleman, who will play anything in any key, and maybe play them through all 12 keys. Understanding them as songs with lyrics has happened over time. Working more with singers, especially with Gillian so extensively over the last ten years, I’ve developed a much better perspective on what these tunes are about, and a better appreciation for the stories behind them. I’ve also had to relearn a lot of the melodies, because I learned so many of them incorrectly.”

“The standards still hold up,” Keezer says. “They’re interesting songs. They have interesting forms. There’s a lot more happening harmonically and melodically than in most of the popular music out there now. The stories that are being told in them still happen today. I mean, you fall in love, you fall out of love. The same stuff is going on.”

“Geoffrey provides such a great harmonic and rhythmic landscape that I don’t feel I’m missing a drummer or a bassist,” Margot says. “There’s constant stimulus that feeds all the creativity. We’re not stuck in a box. If he takes us in one direction, I’ll go with him if I want, or if I change directions, he goes with me if he wants. Within an instant, we can switch from something dense to creating a huge amount of space to change the mood. Having that flexibility and elasticity allows us to explore.”

“When I play solo piano, the number-one priority – in music that is supposed to have a groove – is that it has a strong groove,” says Keezer, whose previous solo recordings are Zero One, from 1999, during his tenure with the Ray Brown Trio, and the protean Heart of the Piano, from 2013. “I try to generate a strong beat, a lot of energy and all of the sound, but lately I’m interested in doing it not as loudly, trying to find a more delicate way to play the instrument so there’s room for Gillian to be heard.

“We have diverse musical interests in common. Gillian can dip into an almost classical vibe on one tune, and more of a gospel or R&B style on another, and straight down the middle jazz, if she wants to scat sing. I’m the same way. I like a lot of different kinds of music, and I like to mix it all up. Also, her voice has a very wide range, and she has tremendous pitch control, so she can pick and choose the vibe she wants to get from a tune based on whether she wants to sing it in a higher, lower, or middle part of her voice.”

Margot concludes: “I’ve been performing the older standards for a long time, and I love to sing them. In the past, especially in the studio, I was often directed to sing in a very particular way, and I worried, ‘I’m supposed to do it like this,’ because it’s forever, it’s on record. Even Power Flower, which I produced myself, was more about the arranging and the music than showcasing what I can do with my voice. I’ve reached a point where I’m not letting people tell me how to sing anymore. For me, this album was about singing the way I want to sing, experimenting more, the way I do on stage.” ## 

1. Blame It on My Youth (Edward Heyman, Oscar Levant) 05:21
2. Thou Swell (Richard Rodgers, Lorenz Hart) 03:33
3. The Greatest Story Ever Told (Donald Brown, Dorothy Brown) 04:46
4. Joyce (Viva o Rio de Janeiro) (Hermeto Pascoal) 03:54
5. Lush Life (Billy Strayhorn) 04:00
6. Eternal Child (Armando Corea) 04:34
7. A Timeless Place (The Peacocks) (Jimmy Rowles, Norma Winstone) 07:16
8. Day In, Day Out (Rube Bloom, Johnny Mercer) 03:52
9. Here Comes the Flood (Peter Gabriel) 05:12
10. All My Tomorrows (Jimmy Van Heusen, Sammy Cahn) 06:13
    

All songs arranged by Gillian Margot & Geoffrey Keezer

Live Dates:
June 7 – Westport, NY – The Mill
June 8 – Portsmouth, NH – Jimmy’s Jazz & Blues Club
June 10 – Los Angeles, CA – Sam First 
June 11 – La Jolla, CA – Athenaeum
June 14 – Paso Robles, CA – Libretto
June 15 – Oakland, CA – Piedmont Piano

from https://lydialiebman.com