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Acclaimed musician, arranger, and composer Jim Hall and pianist Geoff Keezer will come to the Williams Center for the Arts 8 p.m. Friday, Nov. 10. Hall, with five decades of celebrated musicianship, and Keezer, a rising star as a composer and interpreter of standards, will perform an evening of duo improvisation, certain to be one of this year’s highlights.
Tickets for the performance are $20 for the public (free for Lafayette students). They can be obtained by calling the Williams Center box office at (610) 330-5009 during box office hours of noon-2 p.m. and 4-5 p.m. weekdays and one hour before evening performances.
The previously annouced pre-concert talk by jazz pianist Mulgrew Miller has been cancelled due to a scheduling conflict.
Remaining performers in this year’s Jazz Masters Series include Maria Schneider Jazz Orchestra, Saturday, Feb. 10, $22; Bill Charlap Trio, Wednesday, March 7, $18; and Uri Caine’s Goldbergs Project, Wednesday, April 4, $18.
Born in Buffalo and educated at the Cleveland Institute of Music, Hall moved to Los Angeles where he began to attract national, and then international attention in the late 1950s. By 1960, he had arrived in New York to work with Sonny Rollins and Art Farmer among others. His live and recorded collaborations with Bill Evans, Paul Desmond, and Ron Carter are legendary.
With a creative legacy that extends from Charlie Christian and Django Reinhardt to Sonny Rollins and Art Farmer, and to Itzhak Perlman and André Previn, Hall claims a place in the world of jazz.
Not only is Hall one of the jazz world’s favorite guitarists, he has also earned critical acclaim for his skills as a composer and arranger. When he was named an NEA Jazz Master in 2004, he was praised as “an artist forever questing, refusing to stand on his past laurels, always on the lookout for the experimental edge and for placing himself amidst challenging young players.”
Pianist Geoff Keezer, in his third Williams Center appearance, joins Hall for this evening of duo improvisation.
Keezer has been immersed in music his entire life. Born into a musical family, with both parents teaching music, he began studying piano at the age of three. After completing his first year at the Berklee School of Music at the age of 18, Keezer was faced with two job offers – one with Miles Davis and the other with Art Blakey. He chose the latter, and his career was off to a fast start.
Keezer has worked with virtually all the living legends of jazz and has appeared on countless recordings, both as a leader and as an accompanist. His professional career has spanned many projects and genres.
In addition to his 11 solo releases and constant touring, Keezer has been commissioned to compose several pieces for public performance, including “Palm Reader” for the Carnegie Hall Jazz Band; “Listen Look” for the Saint Joseph Ballet; “Variables,” a set of variations for piano and string quartet written especially for the Mainly Mozart Festival in San Diego; and “Southeast Alaska Suite,” commissioned by the Scottish National Jazz Orchestra.
The 2006-07 Performance Series at Lafayette College is supported in part by gifts from Friends of the Williams Center for the Arts; by provisions of the Josephine Chidsey Williams Endowment, Alan and Wendy Pesky Artist-in-Residence Program, James Bradley Fund, and Ed Brunswick Jazz Fund; and by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation, Pennsylvania Performing Arts on Tour; the F.M. Kirby Foundation, Dexter and Dorothy Baker Foundation, and New England Foundation for the Arts.